The Archaeology of Objects and Identities at the Point Alones Chinese

Village, Pacific Grove, CA (1860-1906)

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF

CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Bryn Williams

August 2011
© Bryn Williams 2011
All Rights Reserved

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REPLACE THIS PAGE W/ SIGNATURE PAGE

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 ABSTRACT

Nineteenth century California was a nexus point where complex flows of

global capital and immigrants with different cultures and aspirations interacted with

and transformed one another. Chinese immigrants participated in these events and

their presence was distinctly marked on the social and economic landscape of

California. This dissertation uses evidence from archaeological excavations and

historical research to examine the role of material culture in the intercultural

encounters that unfolded in California during this time period. This is accomplished

through a focused study of a Chinese immigrant and Chinese American fishing village

that was located at Point Alones in Pacific Grove, CA from approximately 1860 to

1906. Specifically, this dissertation untangles some of the social and cultural

transformations that occurred in the Point Alones Village by exploring how material

culture was actively deployed by Chinese and Chinese Americans living in the village

as well as by their non-Chinese neighbors. It explains how both groups highlighted

certain aspects of Chinese materiality culled from a more complex and ambivalent

material assemblage. This process, which I have termed “selective bundling,”

articulates hegemonic processes such as identity formation with locally performed

actions and events.

In addition to a broad overview of the results of archaeological excavations at

the site of the Point Alones Village, this dissertation includes a sustained analysis of

two categories of artifacts recovered from archaeological excavations: Coins and

Ceramics.

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 Identity claims that relate to taxonomies of race and gender were actively

deployed by both Chinese and non-Chinese individuals to negotiate rights claims and

police the socio-cultural boundaries of national belonging. By understanding how

these identities were constructed at multiple scales in both discourse and in practice,

this dissertation builds a thicker understanding of the material and rhetorical forces

that shape culture change.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would not have been able to write this dissertation without the assistance and

encouragement from a large number of friends, family, and colleagues.

I am particularly indebted to my principal advisor, Barbara Voss. The amount

of intellectual and personal debt that I owe to Barb is incalculable. She has been

encouraging when I needed encouragement and critical when my work needed

critique. Her guidance has consistently sharpened my scholarship. Perhaps most

importantly, Barb has demonstrated that it is possible to be both a successful scholar

and an involved and supportive mentor. In every respect I could not have asked for a

better advisor.

Another individual who has been instrumental in the development and

execution of this research project is Laura Jones. Laura’s intimate knowledge of the

stratigraphy and history of archaeological excavations at the Hopkins Marine Station

proved incredibly handy as I conducted the research described in this dissertation.

Laura, in her role as the Stanford University campus archaeologist, assisted with

resources and smoothed over logistical problems throughout the research process. She

provided my introductions to the Hopkins Marine Station personnel and kept me

informed about avenues for recruiting student volunteers and obtaining research

grants. Much of our field equipment (including “Moby,” the gigantic white field van)

was obtained through Laura. She also went out of her way to keep me gainfully

employed throughout my dissertation research, connecting me up with archaeological

monitoring and museum jobs that put much-needed money in my pocket while

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expanding my archaeological skills and knowledge. I am incredibly grateful for

Laura’s intellectual and personal guidance.

Lynn Meskell’s research on gender and sexuality and her work with the

politics of heritage management inspired my research practices even before she

became a Professor at Stanford and I feel very lucky to have her as a member of my

reading committee. Our discussions about the intersections between archaeology,

social theory, and identity have shaped my research and encouraged me to engage

with productive bodies of scholarship that I otherwise would have missed. Mike

Wilcox has also provided critical guidance throughout the research and writing

process. In particular, he has encouraged me to think critically about the benefits and

limits of archaeological practice that is engaged with interests and concerns outside of

the academy.

At Stanford University I have benefited from an intellectual community that is

simultaneously rigorous and humane. In addition to my reading committee, I would

like to thank the Stanford professors who, through coursework and conversation, have

contributed to the development of my scholarship including Ian Hodder, John Rick,

Ian Morris, Michael Shanks, Paulla Ebron, Miyako Inoue, Sylvia Yanagisako,

Purnima Mankekar, Bill Rathje, and Ian Robertson.

Paul Mullins and Martin Hall were both visiting professors during my time at

Stanford. The seminars that they taught while visiting were foundational experiences

and their continued willingness to engage with my research has been invaluable.

I can’t imagine writing this dissertation without the supportive community of

graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at Stanford University. I could write an

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entire chapter extolling the virtues of each of these colleagues and I look forward to

working with them in the future as our careers develop. I want to particularly thank the

archaeologists who shared space with me in Professor Voss’s historical archaeology

lab: Stacey Camp, Adrian Meyers, Guido Pezzerossi, Andrea Milly, and Megan Kane.

These individuals have been generous with their time and knowledge. Their presence

in the laboratory made every aspect of my work an enjoyable experience.

The many discussions that I have had with the students who I was able to teach

at Stanford University and San Francisco State University has left clear marks on this

dissertation and I thank them.

I honestly doubt that I would have navigated the requirements and deadlines of

Stanford University without the expert assistance of Shelly Coughlan and Ellen

Christensen. I’m sure that I would have been kicked out of Stanford a dozen times for

missing administrative deadlines or improperly entering my course enrolment forms

were it not for Shelly and Ellen’s patient vigilance.

Archaeological excavation is a communal and collaborative activity and a

number of individuals made my research at the Hopkins Marine Station possible. The

staff and faculty of the Hopkins Marine Station were gracious and generous hosts.

Their love of science and of the Monterey Bay was inspiring and I appreciate their

patience even when I trampled over their landscaping and dug large holes in the

middle of their lawn. Judy Thompson and Joe Wible deserve particular kudos for

welcoming me to the site, assisting with logistics, and sharing their comprehensive

knowledge about the history of the Hopkins Marine Station and Monterey.

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 I was blessed to lead a team of experienced and dedicated field researchers and

excavations assistants. Indeed, the excavation component of this project would not

have been possible without the expert work of David and Ian Neidel, Claire Menke,

Stacey Camp, Mike Konzak, Dudley Gardner and his team of crack-excavators from

Wyoming, Rod Jone, Patricia Paramoure, and Erica Simmons. I also extend my

eternal gratitude to all of the students and volunteers who came to the site and donated

their time and labor to these excavations.

I will be forever indebted to my close friends and family for their boundless

love and their steadfast support. They are my life and I owe them more than I can ever

express.

Finally, Gerry Low-Sabado deserves special recognition for her unwavering

support of my research, her incredibly generosity, and her intense dedication to

preserving the history and legacy of her ancestors who lived in the Chinese village at

Point Alones. From the moment I met Gerry, when I was first thinking about the

feasibility of an archaeological project at Point Alones, to when I wrote the last pages

of this dissertation, she has stood by my side, providing encouragement and insight.

During excavations she spent every day digging in the sometimes-sweltering heat.

When visitors would stop by the site Gerry would leap out of the unit and expertly

explain why Chinese American history is important for all Californians and why the

events that happened over a hundred years ago in this particular village mattered. Her

tireless work and her deep commitment to making California history come alive never

ceases to amaze and inspire me. I’m proud to consider her both a friend and colleague.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgemetns vi

Table of Contents x

List of Tables xiv

List of Figures xv

Introduction 1
Methodologies 3
Themes and Chapters 6
Unifying Themes 13

Chapter 1: Encounters and Identities 19

Introduction 19
Questions 23
Archaeology and Identity 25
Overseas Chinese 29
Race 31
Gender 33
Class 36
Identification and Selective Bundling 42

Chapter 2: Sites of Friction 48

The Archaeology of the Chinese Diaspora 48
Early Archaeological Studies 50
Project Driven Archaeology 54
Assmeblages and Ethnic Markers 55
Asian American Studies 64
Social Science and Social Work 68
Anthropology 73
The Ethnic studies Movement 79
Themes in Asian American Studies 85
Conclusion 95

Chapter 3: Orienting Monterey 96

Introduction 96
Monterey Before Colonialism 99
Spanish Colonial California 102
American Monterey 106
Pacific Grove 113
Monterey in the 20th and 21st centuries 116

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 The Chinese in Monterey 117
Point Alones 120
Point Alones after the Point Alones Village 130

Chapter 4: Materializing Discourse 132

Introduction 132
China, The Chinese, and Scientific Racism 137
China in the West before Scientific Racism 140
The “Chinese Sage” 148
Adventure Narratives and Common Tropes 152
Filth and Squalor 153
The Exotic 154
Moribund Culture, Feminine Sensuality 155
Conclusions 157
Inland China Mission 157
The Point Alones Village 160
The Bradys and Prince Hi-Ti-Li 161
Newspapers 166
Squalor, Danger, Exotic Difference 167
A Particular Danger to Women 173
Jessie Julliet Knox 176
Biography 177
“Pidgin English” 179
Foreign Spaces 179
Point Alones in Knox’s Text 180
Rhetorical Authority 182
Photographs and Drawings 184
Self-Representation 186
Conclusions 188

Chapter 5: Archaeology at Point Alones 190

Introduction 190
Synthesis of Research Findings 192
Excavation Schedule 193
Excavation Results 193
Priority Area 1 193
Priority Area 2 194
Priority Area 3 194
Priority Area 4 195
Under the Boatworks Building 195
Summary 195
Survey 196
Mapping Procedures 197

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 Identifying the Limits of the Site 200
Identifying Survey Locations 203
Historical Photographs 204
Historical Documents 205
Previous Archaeological Studies at CA-MNT-104 208
Surface Survey 210
Test Excavation: Survey Area 3 212
Test Excavation: Survey Area 2 216
Test Excavation: Survey Area 4 221
Summary of Preliminary Survey Results 224
Excavation 227
Research Team 228
Methods 229
Priority Area 1 229
N1074 E1014 230
N1077 E1014 232
N1077 E1016 234
N1074 E1018 237
N1077 E1011 240
N1077 E1012 242
Conclusions 245
Excavating Underneath the Boatworks Building 246
Boatworks Unit 1 247
Boatworks Unit 2 249
Conclusions 251
Priority Area 2 252
N1012 E997 253
N1042 E980 256
N1054 E981 and N1054 E982 260
Priority Area 3 268
N1038 E943 268
N1019 E946 271
Conclusions 275
North of the Boatworks Building 275
Summary of Excavations 277
Conclusions 281

Chapter 6: Coins, Money, and Materiality 283

Introduction 283
Coins and Archaeology 286
Terminology 293
Chinese Coins in non-Chinese North American Contexts 296
Chinese Coins at overseas Chinese Sites 298
Point Alones Village Coins 309
A Short History of Money: China 315

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 The Materiality of Money in the United States 326
Coins at the Point Alones Village 338
The Context of Coins Found At CA-MNT-104 340
Coins Minted in Hong Kong 341
Chinese Wen Coins 347
Coins and Paper Money 352

Chapter 7: Ceramic China Standing for China 359

Introduction 359
Chinese Artifacts and Overseas Chinese Archaeology 365
Asian-Produced Ceramics Found in Monterey and their 369
Possible Origins
Asian Stoneware 373
Asian Porcelain (Porcelaneous Stoneware) 376
Bamboo 376
Four Flowers 378
Celadon 380
Double Happiness 381
Ceramics at CA-MNT-104 383
The Ceramic Assemblage 387
Approach 1: Variation in Decorative Motif 389
Approach 2: Strategic Display of “Genteel” Ceramics 395
Approach 3: Cultural Conservatism 406
Approach 4: Hermeneutic Approach 411
Gender and Ceramics at the Point Alones Village 414
Tiny Cups and Chinoiserie 418
Conclusion 420

Coda 421

Tables 425

Figures 428

References 468

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 TABLES

7.1 Tableware Assemblage from Chinese Contexts 426

From Units N1012 E997 and N1042 E980

7.2 Tableware Assemblage from Chinese Contexts 427

From Units N1054 and E982

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 FIGURES

3.1 Map of California showing Monterey Peninsula 429

3.2 Map of Monterey Peninsula showing Point Alones 430
3.3 Map of Monterey Peninsula from Truman (1880: 130) 431
4.1 Excerpt from Knox (1911: 92-93) showing Textual Descriptions 432
of Point Alones Juxtaposed with a Photograph of Point Alones
4.2 Etching of Monterey Chinatown from 433
La Tour du Monde (1876/07-1876/12: 157)
5.1 USGS 7.5' Series, Monterey Quadrangle, California, 434
showing Project location on Northern Monterey Peninsula
5.2 USGS 7.5' Series, Monterey Quadrangle, California, 435
showing Point Alones and Hopkins Marine Station
5.3 Map of Hopkins Marine Station 436
5.4 Map of Excavation Priority Areas 437
5.5 Map of Excavation Unit Locations 438
5.6 Map of Excavation Unit Locations in Priority Area 1 439
5.7 Location of Primary Project Benchmarks 440
5.8 Map of Point Alones Village showing Structures Remaining 441
After 1906 Fire. Made by Pacific Improvement Company
5.9 Detail of Map from Figure 5.8 showing Residence of Tuck Lee 442
5.10 Photograph of Hopkins Marine Station showing Location of 443
Tuck Lee’s House and Boatworks Building
5.11 Map of 1977 ARS Excavations at Hopkins Marine Station 444
5.12 Plan Drawing of Stratum 3, Unit N1074 E1014 445
5.13 Unit N1012 E997 North Sidewall Profile 446
5.14 Unit N1042 E980 North Sidewall Profile 447
5.15 Unit N1054 E981/E982 North Sidewall Profile 448
5.16 Plan Drawing of N1054 E981 Stratum 12 449
5.17 Photograph of Large Boatworks Period Boat Fragment 450
6.1 Example of Wen Coins Recovered from Point Alones 451
6.2 Unidentifiable Coin Recovered from N1054 E981 Stratum 13 452
6.3 Chinese Wen Recovered From N1054 E981 Stratum 13 453
6.4 “Seated Liberty Dime” Recovered From N1054 E981 Stratum 13 454
6.5 Unidentifiable Coin (Likely “Seated Liberty” Dime) 455
Recovered From N1054 E981 Stratum 13
6.6 1873 “Seated Liberty Dime” 456
Recovered From N1054 E982 Stratum 13
6.7 Detail of Coin From Figure 6.6 457
6.8 Hong Kong 1 Mil Coin Recovered From N1054 E981 Stratum 13 458
6.9 Chinese Wen Recovered From N1054 E982 Stratum 12 459
6.10 Chinese Wen From Reign of Kangxi Emperor (1661-1722) 460
Recovered From N1012 E997 Stratum 6
6.11 Detail of Coin From Figure 6.10 461

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7.1 Example of “Bamboo” Decorated Bowl 462
From Point Alones Village
7.2 Example of “Four Flowers” Decorated Dish 463
From Point Alones Village
7.3 Example of “Celadon” Decorated Bowl 464
From Point Alones Village
7.4 Example of “Double Happiness” Decorated Bowl 465
From Santa Cruz, CA
7.5 Example of Tiny Cup with “Four Flowers” Decoration 466
Compared to Bowl with “Bamboo” Decoration
7.6 Example of Tiny Cup with “Celadon” Decoration 467
Compared to Bowl with “Celadon” Decoration

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 INTRODUCTION

“Lee Chong’s grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply.
It was small and crowded but within its single room a man could find everything he
needed or wanted to live and to be happy - clothes, food, both fresh and canned,
liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment, machinery, boats cordage, caps, pork chops. You
could buy at Lee Chong’s a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey
and a cigar. You could work out combinations to fit almost any mood.”
- John Steinbeck. Cannery Row.

John Steinbeck uses this description of objects found in Lee Chong’s grocery

store to introduce readers to Cannery Row in Monterey, California. The places and

people described by Steinbeck in this book exist in the echos of the Point Alones

Chinese fishing village, a place that Steinbeck calls China Point.

There was a real Cannery Row and there was a real Lee Chong. Or, I should

say, both Cannery Row and Lee Chong are fictionalized depictions of a real place and

a real person. “Lee Chong” is modeled after Won Yee, a man who “settled in New

Monterey around 1918 and built the well-known Wing Chong (‘glorious and

successful’) store and a squid export business” (Walton 1997: 263). You can still visit

Cannery Row today where you can see the places that lent their form to Steinbeck’s

text.

The real Wing Chong market at the real Cannery Row is only a short walk

from the real China Point, now called Point Alones. In Cannery Row Lee Chong visits

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China Point because this is the place where his ancestors lived and because this is the

place where his grandfather is buried.

This dissertation explores the history and legacy of the Chinese fishing village

that existed at the place Steinbeck called China Point in order to understand the causes

and consequences of the encounters that occurred there. I engage with this question by

examining many of the objects and artifacts that were once associated with that place.

Some of these objects and artifacts were recovered during archaeological excavations

that I conducted at the site and others were recovered through their description in

historical texts. Just as the objects described in Lee Chong’s store provide an entryway

into the social world of Cannery Row, the objects I attend to in this dissertation

provide a entryway into the social worlds and meaningful lives of historical subjects.

Specifically, this dissertation examines the cultural politics of objects and

aesthetics associated with the Point Alones Village. I explore how and why artifacts

with specific historical genealogies were brought to this village by the Chinese and

Chinese American residents and why some, but not all, of those artifacts appear in

historical documents written by both Chinese and non-Chinese individuals. Through

this analysis it becomes clear that both groups highlighted certain aspects of Chinese

materiality culled from a more complex and ambivalent material assemblage. This

process, which I have termed “selective bundling,” articulates hegemonic processes

such as identity formation with locally performed actions and events. Identity claims

that relate to taxonomies of race and gender were actively deployed by both Chinese

and non-Chinese individuals associated with the Point Alones Village in order to

negotiate rights claims and police the boundaries of national belonging. By

2
understanding how these identities were constructed at multiple scales in both

discourse and in practice, this dissertation builds a thicker understanding of the

material and rhetorical forces that shape social identity and culture change.

METHODOLOGIES

Early in my studies of the history and archaeology of the Point Alones Village,

I began to realize that the cultural politics surrounding the Point Alones Village (and

Chinese immigrant and Chinese American identities generally) were formed through

the circulation of both physical objects and objects materialized through text. With

this in mind, I engaged in an interdisciplinary suite of research methods including

archaeology, archival research, literary analysis, and oral history. An extensive body

of secondary literature was also consulted as I formed my research questions, executed

my research design, and attempted to explain the objects and aesthetics that appeared

in the archival record and at the archaeological site.

The archival portion of the research was primarily conducted in California

between 2005 and 2010. Particularly central to this project were the collections housed

in the California History Room of the Monterey Public Library and the records of the

Stanford University Special Collections (the Pacific Improvement Company records

proved exceptionally important). Other archives consulted included the Stanford

University Library, the San Jose State University Special Collections and Archives,

the Bancroft Library, the History San Jose Special Collections, the National Archives

and Records Administration in San Bruno, CA, the Superior Court of California for

the County of Monterey, the Pacific Grove Public Library, the Hoover Institution, and

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the Special Collections and Archives at UC Santa Cruz. Data recovered from this

archival research allowed me to understand how objects at the Point Alones Village

were deployed by both village residents and non-resident observers to constitute

powerful and meaningful discourses about identity, economy, and belonging.

In the summer of 2008 I travelled to Guangdong in part to attempt to locate the

ceramic kilns where pottery shipped to the Point Alones Village might have

originated. In the town of Shiwan I found interesting historical records detailing the

organization of utilitarian stoneware ceramic production in that town and the

international markets, including California, where many of ceramics were sold.

The archaeological component of this project is based on a number of different

survey and excavation projects that were undertaken at the site of the Point Alones

Village. In addition to the primary survey and excavation that I directed (detailed in

Chapter 5), I have directed archaeological monitoring of construction activities at the

Point Alones Village site on a number of occasions between 2006 and 2010. Although

none of that monitoring uncovered or impacted intact features from the Chinese

occupation of the village, important geophysical and stratigraphic information was

uncovered. Additionally, I drew information from several archaeological research

projects that had been previously conducted at the site (detailed in Chapter 5). Data

recovered from these various archaeological research projects, primarily the project

detailed in Chapter 5, have been used to understand and uncover objects present at the

site that might not have appeared in textual descriptions of the village. By identifying

incongruities between the artifacts that appear in text and the artifacts that appear in

the soil I can better understand how the process of selective bundling works to

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constitute hegemonic discourses in local situation. Additionally, data recovered from

the archaeological excavations provides information about the routinized activities of

everyday life, activities that clearly constitute social identity and that tie global

productions into local contexts.

The texts that I analyzed in my research were not confined to newspaper

accounts and other “factual” descriptions of the village. As I have detailed elsewhere

(Williams 2010), fictional stories and idealized aesthetics can motivate action and

perpetuate powerful discourses just as readily as “factual” descriptions. In this

dissertation I extend that argument, demonstrating that clearly fictional stories were

not simply empty diversions or escapist fantasy. Their distribution and circulation

cited, iterated, and materialized specific tropes of identity (in this case, Chinese

identity). I demonstrate that these tropes transpose from newspaper articles that

reported “the truth” to fictive accounts of the Point Alones Village and back again

with force and vigor. My research with “fictional” texts draws extensively from

literary theory and Asian American studies (as is detailed in Chapters 2 and 4).

A final research methodology that I employed in this dissertation project is oral

history with individuals whose families had lived in Monterey when the Point Alones

Village was in existence, including many descendants of village residents. This

research revealed important historical information about the site and also served to

illuminate which aspects of life in the village and which artifacts circulating in the

village remained notable and important to the families of the people who had used

these objects and possibly even brought them thousands of miles across the Pacific

Ocean. Through these complementary methods I have been able to build a “thick

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description” (Geertz 1977) of objects and aesthetics that circulated at the Point Alones

Village and better understand how those objects engendered both local and globally

salient cultural productions.

THEMES AND CHAPTERS

This dissertation is organized into seven chapters in three parts. Each chapter

forms a discrete argument but several themes, explained below, cut across the

dissertation and draw these chapters into dialogue with one another.

PART 1: CONTEXT

This section places the dissertation into its disciplinary context, explaining the

theoretical and methodological sources from which I draw inspiration and the

academic interventions that I make through this dissertation. In this section I place into

productive dialogue theories and methods from academic traditions that archaeologists

studying the Chinese overseas have previously only given cursory attention.

CHAPTER 1: ENCOUNTERS AND IDENTITIES

This chapter introduces the dissertation by briefly explaining its theoretical,

historical, and methodological interventions. It begins with a discussion of the

archaeological encounter with the past, explaining how archaeologists constitute their

subject. Chapter 1 then outlines some of the questions that this projects asks about the

cultural logics that allow objects to mediate encounters. Identity is a widely discussed

category of archaeological analysis and this chapter includes an explanation of how

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this dissertation builds from and articulates with broader themes in the archaeology of

identity. This section serves both to critique formulations of “race, class, and gender”

that hold these categories to be ahistorical social cleavages while simultaneously

explaining why these categories of difference were particularly salient in late 19th and

early 20th century California. The chapter explores how these social categories have

been theorized by archaeologists, especially those archaeologists who study overseas

Chinese communities. Finally, the chapter explains the concept of “selective

bundling,” expresses its origin in the work of Laclau and Mouffe, and discusses how

archaeological research at the Point Alones Village can provide a counter narrative to

“top down” theories of modernity and globalization while seriously attending to global

processes.

CHAPTER 2: SITES OF FRICTION

Scholars in the field of Asian American studies have argued that the racial and

gendered identities of Chinese Americans that developed in the 19th century were

instrumental in shaping the social and cultural landscape of contemporary California.

Although their theories are persuasive, they often pass over the role of artifacts and

objects in these transformations. This chapter argues for the central role of material

goods in the creation and iteration of Chinese American identities, explaining how

archaeological theory and method can thicken historical models of identity formation

in Chinese American communities. I argue that attending to materiality allows us to

build a powerful model for explaining how identity formation is simultaneously a

global and local process.

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 Chapter 2 begins with an overview of previous archaeological studies of

Chinese American and overseas Chinese communities, focusing on how key scholars

in the field approach questions of identity formation. Particular attention is paid to the

ways that archaeologists have interpreted objects produced in China. The section

argues that these artifacts are primarily interpreted a ‘ethnic markers’ that reflect,

rather than produce, identity. Archaeological projects that have attempted to formulate

more nuanced and active understanding of material culture are discussed and

critiqued. The section concludes with an outline of the social and economic models

that these archaeologists used to explain the presence and composition of various

Chinese and non-Chinese artifacts in these assemblages.

The next section discusses the history of Asian American studies and outlines

how scholars in this discipline have developed sophisticated conceptualizations of

Asian American identity. The chapter concludes by discussing several insights from

Asian American studies that inform this archaeological study.

PART 2: OBJECTS FROM TEXT

Part 2 of this dissertation presents my research on the historical and social

context of the Point Alones Village as well as my investigations into how material

culture is represented in textual descriptions of the village. In this section I use

evidence gathered from primary documents including newspapers, corporate reports

and memos, photographs, personal letters, census schedules, and other archival

materials. I also incorporate evidence from oral history and secondary sources in order

8
to understand how material culture articulated with the cultural politics of Chinese

identity in 19th and early 20th century California.

CHAPTER 3: ORIENTING MONTEREY

This chapter introduces those “locals” and “globals” upon which my analysis

of material culture rests. It provides a history of Monterey culled from both primary

and secondary sources. The chapter explains how the Point Alones Village came into

being and discusses how instances of culture contact shaped life in this community.

This chapter also describes the history and of the communities that surrounded the

Point Alones Village - Monterey and Pacific Grove.

CHAPTER 4: MATERIALIZING DISCOURSE

This chapter uses close readings of historical documents including newspapers,

photographs, census schedules, and corporate memos to argue that the process of

racializaiton in Monterey is predicated on selectively highlighting and publicly

representing material culture and tying that material culture to specific bodies, sites,

and affects. I argue that these discursive representations are the productive force that

links local practices to hegemonic formulations of identity. Despite this coherence, I

demonstrate that the awkward fit between practice and rhetoric necessitates fungibility

in the citation and repetition of hegemony, a process that allows for local situations to

inform and, ultimately, change global productions. This chapter begins with an

overview of the evidence used. It then discuss how historical documents that frame the

Chinese in Monterey as dangerous or polluting highlight material culture and attach

9
meaning to objects. The chapter then explores how documents that support or promote

the Chinese presence in the United States do the same. It concludes by arguing that

these discourses work together to actively define the limits of multiculturalism through

the material features of identity.

PART 3: OBJECTS AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Part 3 of this dissertation focuses on the results of archaeological excavations

at the Point Alones Village site. This section combines evidence from archival

research with extensive artifact analysis. The first chapter is an overview of the

archaeological research that I conducted at the site. The next two chapters deal with

specific classes of artifacts that were recovered from excavation, exploring their

polysemic character and discussing how they interpolate into what Laclau and Mouffe

(1985) have called the concrete “articulatory practices” that bind together the “global”

and the “local.”

CHAPTER 5: ARCHAEOLOGY AT POINT ALONES

This chapter presents sustained and extensive descriptions of the

archaeological research methods and findings. It begins by answering the questions:

why excavation? and why Point Alones? The chapter then provides a synthesis of

research findings that discusses the key findings relating to the Chinese occupation of

the site and provides an overview of the archaeological contexts that have integrity

and are related to the Chinese occupation of the site. This section provides the

minimum information necessary for understanding the results of the excavation.

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 The remainder of Chapter 5 details the site mapping procedures, explains the

site survey that I directed, and presents the rationale and results of the archaeological

excavation that I directed at the site of the Point Alones Village. The contents and

stratigraphy of each individual unit excavated is discussed.

CHAPTER 6: COINS, MONEY, AND MATERIALITY

This chapter ushers in my discussion of the artifacts uncovered during the

excavations detailed in Chapter 5. The chapter begins by focusing on the coins

recovered during archaeological excavations at the Point Alones Village. In this

chapter I ask why coins are objects that seem to have exceptional draw for both

archaeologists and the public. Chapter 6 then provide a short overview of some of the

ways that historical archaeologists have analyzed coins, with a particular focus on

Overseas Chinese archaeology. Arguing that the polyvalent cultural productions that

coins engender cannot be understood without understanding their historical genealogy,

the chapter briefly discuss the history of Chinese money, explaining why coins were

used and how coins were minted in China. Finally, Chapter 6 contains my argument

that the coins found during excavations at the Point Alones Village were interpolated

into meaningful local and global discourses about citizenship, identity, and economy.

At the Point Alones Village these coins stood for more than an empty money

commodity or a token of abstract value. Through their materiality they mediated a

multiplicity of social relationships.

11
CHAPTER 7: CERAMIC CHINA STANDING FOR CHINA

This chapter discusses the ceramic assemblage recovered from the Chinese

occupation of the Point Alones Village. The chapter begins with an explanation of

how ceramic assemblages have been described by archaeologists studying the Chinese

overseas. The chapter outlines the ceramics recovered during the excavations detailed

in Chapter 5 and discusses some of technical, political, and economic processes that

brought them to the site. The chapter then explores four ways that ceramic

assemblages have been interpreted by scholars studying Chinese American and

Chinese immigrant communities. It presents the argument that each of these analytics

is rooted, usually implicitly, in a theoretical model describing the relationship of

ceramic artifacts to the cultural politics of identity. The chapter details my attempts to

apply each of these models to the objects recovered during the excavations described

in Chapter 5. I explain how these models illuminate and/or obscure, the experiences

and social world of the Point Alones Village residents.

The chapter ends with a brief analysis of a single small artifact recovered

during excavations. This serves to explore the ways in which China and China have

become discursively associated, and discuss the racialized and gendered implications

of this association at the Point Alones Village. This analysis sustains the argument that

the archaeological assemblage at the Point Alones Village is best interpreted not

through models centered around “choice” or models that are reduced to “political

economy,” but rather, as a series of functionally similar artifacts that circulated in

different social economies and followed different trajectories before becoming

incorporated into active use (and eventual discard) at the Point Alones Village. This

12
object-centered approach understands the active use and circulation of artifacts to

constitute the tangible substance of hegemonic social forms.

CODA AND APPENDIX

The dissertation is concluded with a brief coda followed by an appendix that

presents all maps, figures, and illustrations.

UNIFYING THEMES

Each chapter in this dissertation presents a discrete argument, but several

important themes unite this project and can be read through the document. These

themes, and the questions they engender, compelled the multidisciplinary character of

this research and articulate the diverse objects and aesthetics discussed in the various

chapters. I list some of these themes below.

GENDER

As I explain in this dissertation, Chinese and Chinese American communities

have historically been primarily explicitly marked through their racialization.

Archaeologists have often uncritically taken that racialization to be the reflection of a

foundational identity. Through a genealogical analysis of objects and aesthetics

associated with the Point Alones Village, this dissertation demonstrates that the

racialization of the Chinese and Chinese Americans in the United States was always

embedded in taxonomies of gender (and related taxonomies of sexuality).

13
 This theme permeates the dissertation. For example, Chapter 1 explores some

of the theoretical challenges to formulations of identity that dismiss the co-constitution

of gender and race. Chapter 2 explains how Asian American studies scholars have

developed sophisticated theories and methods to understand and analyze the gendered

character of the racializaiton of Chinese American communities. Chapter 3 presents

evidence of some of gendered discourses that were articulated with reference to the

Point Alones community. Chapter 4 discusses specific objects and aesthetics that

contributed to this engendering and that were materialized in text. The archaeological

components of the dissertation also extensively engage with the causes and

consequences of the gendered character of Chinese and Chinese American

racialization. As chapters 5, 6, and 7 detail, artifacts such as coins and ceramics were

key nodal points for the creation, citation, and circulation of these gendered

discourses.

MODERNITY AND POLITICAL BELONGING

A second theme that cuts across the dissertation involves an attempt to

understand the unstable configurations of modernity that were developing in the late

19th century and mark their relationship to emerging forms of political belonging.

This dissertation demonstrates that in a very real way, objects and aesthetics were the

means through which modern bodies and modern spaces were imagined to exist. The

enfolding of objects, aesthetics, modernity, and political belonging had serious

consequences for Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans whose bodies and

artifacts were imagined to be irredeemably “premodern.”

14
 Questions of modernity and political belonging bubble up in Chapter 1 where

theories of marginality and articulation that challenge an uncritical theorization of “the

modern” are explored. In Chapter 2 the issue of “the modern” and its relationship to

“China” is directly addressed in the analysis of Asian American studies scholarship.

Chapters 3 through 7 engage with this issue by examining the historical context of

these comparisons and by detailing some of the ways that these globally salient

discourses were woven through objects and bodies at the Point Alones Village.

Archaeologists often uncritically (though usually unintentionally) perpetuate an

understanding of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans communities as

fundamentally “premodern.” These chapters forcefully argue against such a

characterization, instead suggesting that “modernity” itself was a series of locally

articulated politically efficacious ordering of bodies, object, and aesthetics that, as

Rofel (1999: 3) suggests, revolve around “uneven dialogues about the place of those

who move in and out of categories of otherness.”

ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE PRESENT

An especially important component of this archaeological research is not

explicitly discussed in this dissertation but nevertheless permeates my arguments and

compelled much of my research. This is the component of the project akin to what

archaeologists have variously called “public archaeology” (McDavid 1997, 2002),

“community archaeology” (Marshall 2002), or simply “archaeology as political

action” (McGuire 2008). A primary goal of this archaeological project has been to

make the history of the Chinese village at Point Alones visible in Monterey and

15
Pacific Grove. This had been done in active collaboration with individuals whose

ancestors lived in the village, some of whom participated in the archaeological

excavations. The concerns and research questions of descendants has also been at the

forefront of my project, from its origin through its execution and continuing to the

present day.

As a part of this research I have also attempted to employ archaeological

evidence to comment upon relevant present-day social and political concerns,

primarily centered around the causes and consequences of anti-immigrant sentiment in

California. I have done this through multiple tactics and strategies engaging with a

range of “publics.” In short, I have been trying to make archaeology “useful” and have

done so through active collaboration with diverse communities. Through this

collaborative process I have worked with many different allies. These have included

descendants of village residents, local ethnic- or heritage- focused community groups,

members of the media, politicians, non-archaeologist scientists, and interested

individuals who have heard about the archaeological research in one way or another.

As an archaeologist who studies social life in California during the 19th

century, one of the elements about the Chinese residents of Point Alones that I find

particularly striking is the multiple scales and contexts in which their political

struggles were embedded, and the different discursive and material strategies that

these individuals used to combat anti-Chinese racism. As I explain in this dissertation,

village residents employed a variety of strategies and tactics to effect their political

agendas with varying levels of success.They attacked racism and exploitation at a

local level by, for example, engaging with the court system (fighting for their right to

16
continue to use traditional fishing methods and their title over local lands). They

resisted the symbolic discourse that imagined them as improper citizens by at times

situationally conforming to normative models of citizenship and at other times

publicly challenging the logics of those norms.

At a statewide and regional level, members of the community fought for their

rights by banding together with other likeminded individuals (both Chinese and non-

Chinese) to challenge laws in courts. They also funded sympathetic political

campaigns. Again, symbolic discourses of “proper white citizenship” were

strategically manipulated and/or resisted, such as when a village resident appeared in

“western garb” while being interviewed about his involvement in electoral politics for

a nationally-circulating non-Chinese magazine, or when Chinese individuals included

American flags prominently in their lunar new years parades.

At a global level, members of this community worked to change the political

system in both China and the United States. In China, many members of the

community donated money to revolutionary causes, circulated revolutionary literature,

and Chinese individuals from California even put their lives on the line to travel to

China and fight for Sun Yet-San’s Guomingdang and other pro-democracy

revolutionary forces.

Following the individuals in the past who employed multiple strategies and

tactics to advance a range of specific political and social goals, I have attempted to use

community archaeology to promote political projects at different scales through

education, lectures, and political agitation. Although these projects are not explicitly

17
mentioned in the body of this dissertation, they have played an essential role in

guiding my research questions and disseminating the results of my research.

18
 CHAPTER 1: ENCOUNTERS AND IDENTITIES

INTRODUCTION

The discipline of archaeology is structured around a series of encounters.

Fieldwork is, by definition, a process of multiple and overlapping encounters. Through

survey work the archaeologist encounters a landscape. Through excavation the

archaeologist encounters a site, soils, and and a myriad of different objects. Oral

history and ethnography provide another kind of encounter - with living people and

their voices and stories. Conducting historical research allows the archaeologist to

encounter objects, texts, and images created in the past and preserved through very

different pathways than those objects, texts, and images encountered during

excavation and analysis.

These archaeological and historical encounters are mediated through another

set of present-day encounters: These are our discussions and conversations with other

archaeologists, with students, with excavation volunteers, as well as our engagement

with disciplinary canon. These academic encounters are also understood within a

framework conjured up by our daily encounters with books and articles and media and

things. In short, these are the encounters of our own everyday lives.

The synthesis of these “little encounters” is wrapped up in an encounter that is

at once both more explicit and more indirect: That of the past with the present. It is

explicit because it was at the core of our practice when the discipline was forged in the

19th century (Trigger 2006) and, despite the protestations of some scholars, remains at

the core of the discipline in the present. Even when archaeologists attempt to build

19
timeless, abstract models of behavior (e.g. LaMotta and Schiffer 2001) or when they

attempt to disassemble the distance and, indeed, the very existence of the difference

between the past and the present in pursuit of an “archaeology of the present” (e.g.

González-Ruibal 2006) they are still wrestling with the implications and possibilities

of encountering a past.

Perhaps this is the fate of archaeology, brought to us by the history of our own

discipline. Trouillot (1991: 24) writes that anthropology “inherited a field of

significance that preceded its formalization.” Calling this field of discipline the

“savage slot,” he explains how the heritage of anthropology, and especially its colonial

roots, caused the discipline to be constituted around a theory of society that

understood the non-western to be a “savage other” that could be made understandable

through anthropological techniques. In other words, anthropology was created in order

to constitute, and not just observe, a specific object of study. Of course, as Fabian

(1983: 15) explains, turning “others” into “savages” requires spatializing time.

Something that is itself a specific and historically contingent formulation of history,

culture, time, and geography. He explains how under this formulation “primitive,

being essentially a temporal concept, is a category, not an object, of Western thought”

(Fabian 1983: 18).

The history of archaeology, at least in Britain and the United States, springs

from a similar genealogy as cultural anthropology, though each national tradition has

its own emphases, tenses, and rhythms (Trigger 1989). Despite the central role that the

encounter with the past has in the archaeological imagination, it is always an

encounter that springs from and returns to the present. Rabinow (1977: 5), following

20
Ricoeur, suggests that a parallel process occurs in cultural anthropology, that

anthropologists learn about themselves by way of a “detour of the comprehension of

the other.”

We are always permanently separated from the past. It is not directly

observable. Furthermore, immediately after we encounter the archaeological site

through excavation, it vanishes into a past that we are able to directly revisit as easily

as we are able to directly revisit the building of the pyramids or the first steps that

humans took towards developing agriculture. Flannery’s (1982) quip about how

archaeologists “kill their informants” rings strikingly true for those of us who have

worked with material culled from poorly recorded excavations (but see González-

Ruibal 2006 for an alternative formulation). This process means that, as Dawdy has

recently explained, archaeology “deals in reading traces and fragments and depends on

fragile, inferential reasoning. Its claims to know the past, whether the archaeologist is

a processual positivist or a postprocessual interpreter, are always modest” (Dawdy

2010: 762).

Of course, just as the work of archaeologists in the present is structured by a

series of overlapping encounters, the lives of people in the past were constituted

through their own encounters of different sorts and framed in multiple spatial and

temporal scales. These encounters took place with both people and things. These

included face-to-face encounters with friends, family, and strangers, encounters with

familiar objects, with foreign-looking objects, with media, and with stories. The “big

questions” in archaeology are questions that deal with the structure and function of

these encounters. For example, what is the development of agriculture but a series of

21
encounters between people and plants, and between people and their neighbors?

Culture change has, in all of its moments, a character of encounter. The structure and

geography of towns, villages, and cities in the past (and the present) makes material

their historical encounters with each other.

This dissertation engages with questions about the form of a series of

encounters that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th century at a small and

seemingly “out of the way” Chinese and Chinese American fishing village on the

California coast. Through the course of this dissertation I will explain how encounters

that occurred in this village or with reference to the village only occurred through

articulations with other encounters, both local and global, intimate and public. Events

and process in China, Europe, and throughout the United States impacted life in this

village and events and processes in the village were heard and seen around the world.

The imagined marginality and out-of-the-way characterization of the Point

Alones Village does not mean that the cultural politics articulated there were

“irrelevant” or only of “local concern.” Tsing (1993, 1994, 2004) has extensively

chronicled how cultural subjects that are imagined to be “marginal” or “marginalized”

stand in “zones of unpredictability at the edge of discursive stability, where

contradictory discourses overlap, or where discrepant kinds of meaning-making

converge” (Tsing 1994: 279). The marginal is no less productive or constitutive than

the core, it is simply a space or category where difference bubbles to the surface in

forceful and often visible ways.

22
QUESTIONS

The specific questions that I address in this dissertation are questions that

revolve around past encounters in this village. Of course, as an archaeologist, I

particularly attend to the ways that objects mediate encounters. I argue that things are

not simply projections of psychological states or tool through which people forge

“authentic” encounters with other people. Instead, I demonstrate that objects can

sometimes serve as a respondent in these interactions and that their position in

multiple fields of discourse can be as slippery, as ambiguous, or even as absent as that

of any subject or person.

Just as the history of 19th century encounters is a multiple, situated, and

variegated history, the questions I ask and attempt to answer in this dissertation are

multiple. Despite this multiplicity, all my questions drape around a central, though by

no means simple, question. What were the causes and consequences of the encounters

that occurred in and about the Point Alones Village?

This question is approached by examining the process of encounter in various

contexts. I ask questions that at first glance seem to be “of the past.” There include

large questions, of the sort that are typical in historigoraphy and historical archaeology

such as: “How did Chinese immigrants forge new identities in California during the

late 19th and early 20th century?” and “What was the role of material culture in the

construction and contestation of those identities?” I also ask questions that seem of the

present (or are, at least on first glance, equally questions of the past and questions of

the present). These are questions such as “How are abstract, but nevertheless

incredibly powerful concepts like political subjectivity and national belonging woven

23
through, and perhaps even constituted by, objects?” and “How can a single object

articulate with multiple, sometimes diametrically opposed, discursive formations?”

Archaeology is itself a process that unfolds over time. Throughout my research

into the history and archaeology of the Point Alones Village new information and

novel perspectives have changed both the questions I ask and the questions that I am

able to answer. My encounter with the archaeological record foreclosed upon some

possible lines on inquiry. For example, the archaeological record dashed my hopes of

discussing intra-site differentiation based upon the association of material culture with

the discrete households of known individuals. On the other hand, the process of

archaeological excavation and my studied engagement with the archaeological record

opened up other possible questions. I hadn’t given much thought to the enchanting

power of “foreign looking” coins in both the past and the present until I experienced it

firsthand on the field site.

THEORETICAL NOURISHMENT

The next section of this chapter serves to outline some of the academic sources

from which I draw nourishment. I introduce some of the authors whose influence is

present, either explicitly or implicitly, throughout the rest of the test. Some of these

sources will be quite familiar to most archaeologists. Others may seem to come from

“left field.” For example, the work of political theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal

Mouffe is infrequently engaged with archaeological circles. In the next section I

explain why this archaeological study of the Point Alones Village attends to

formations of race, class, and gender - those “modernist binary oppositions” (Soja

24
1996) that dominate contemporary theorizing about identity and subject formation.

Critics have challenged studies of these categories of identity, explaining how their

analytic separation from one another, and attempts to apply these categories to all

times and places, projects a certain modernist sensibility onto places and times that

may have been foreign to these social typologies. I take this critiques to heart, but

from my historical and archaeological research I have come to recognize that the Point

Alones Village was a site around which these “narratives of modernity” were openly

discussed and debated, and awkwardly applied. With this in mind, instead of engaging

in an analysis of history that attempts to “find” race, class, or gender at the Point

Alones Village, I instead ask how various axises of identity were articulated at the

Point Alones Village and how these canonical forms of modernity were iterated with

reference to the Point Alones Village.

In this chapter I am not announcing a new “school” of archaeological thought

or proposing a novel programmatic theoretical apparatus with which we can grasp

onto the past a little more tightly. Instead, by narrating my encounter with these other

scholars, I hope to clarify the intellectual foundation of my own encounter with the

Point Alones Village and, ultimately, illuminate and thicken the kinds of “true stories”

about the past that I tell in this document.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND IDENTITY

Identity is one of, if not the, the primary structuring axes in field of historical

archaeology, especially historical archaeology of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Archaeological studies more often than not drape themselves around the imputed

25
identities of people in the past. These are most commonly framed around identities

marked by race, class, and gender. Although some archaeological studies discuss how

these various strands of identity are co-constitutive (Lucas 2006; Voss 2008a), more

often, one or the other is taken as the kernel around which the historical and

archaeological description of a certain site unfolds. Although identity is a common

structuring theme in historical archaeology, it is theorized in different ways by

different authors. Is identity an essential category? Is it accretive? discursive?

performative? overdetermined? epiphenomenal?

As Singleton and Bograd (2000: 3) write: “dividing the world into categories is

not a natural process.” Typologies both implicit and explicit are built around powerful

cultural assumptions about the nature and substance of people and things (Stoler

2002). Even those social division that have been posited as foundational in the modern

world are, upon genealogical reflection, revealed to be embedded in and interwoven

with historically contingent imaginaries of sameness and difference (Foucualt 1978a).

Lacquer (1992) has demonstrated how a social category even so “fundamental” and

“natural” as sex had, in fact, to be invented. Iterations and elaborations of categories

related to this topic were formulated only in historically specific moments and can be

tied into parallel and associated social and intellectual movements in other realms of

thought (Foucualt 1978a). In archaeology, the focus on race, class, and gender

identities mirrors a broader academic marking of these three categories of identity as

particularly privileged analytics for study.

Historical and archaeological studies that attend to these categories of identity

have contributed immeasurably to our understanding of how identities formulated

26
along these lines were created and contested, with a particularly productive focus on

the lives of “those of little note” (Scott 1994), the individuals and groups whose

marked positions within racial, gendered, or classed hierarchies was a constitutive

component of their exclusion or subjugation. But when framing our analyses along

these lines we also need to remember the possibility for erasure and exclusion that

comes with focusing on one or another of these identities or from situating our work

exclusively within the bounds of one of these identities. We must also be wary of

taking these categories as ahistorical. While archaeologists often recognize that these

categories were all “invented” (Voss 2008a), we must resist the temptation to presume

that they are the social cleavages that had efficacy in all times and places. The division

of the world into biogenically-mapped categories of racial difference, for example,

only came into being in consort with an expansive European colonialism (McClintock

1995) and race, thus conceived, would be an improper object of study if one were

attempting to understand social difference in Tang China (618-907). We must also

attend to the kinds of identities that are obscured or subsumed within these typologies.

For example, the academic focus on race, class, and gender can be said to obscure

other often equally important social categories of difference and identity, such as age

(Gilchrist 2004; Baxter 2005), sexuality (Schmidt and Voss 2000), religious status

(Gilchrist 1994; 1995), disability (Cross 1999) or criminality (Casella 2007).

These multiple typologies and categories of identity are not entirely distinct

from one another. Their situationality and ambiguity allows them to fold over each

other in multiple fields of discourse - fields that are at once both local and global

(Stoler 1995; Meskell 1999). Despite the global reach of these identities, it is clear

27
from examinations of their genealogy and practice each of these ‘subsets’ of identity is

not a small and interlocking component of a determining, globally salient process.

Locationality matters, and as Gupta and Ferguson (1992: 9) write, “people have

undoubtedly always been more mobile and identities less fixed than the static and

typologizing approaches of classical anthropology would suggest.” Furthermore, each

category of identity interpolates different kinds of objects and subjects, and they are

woven around specific histories of power. The implication of this is that specific axes

of identity have specific causes and effects that archaeologists must attend to. As Voss

(2008a: 28) warns, “collapsing together different forms of social identification has the

effect of obscuring the specific power relations involved in the production and

maintenance of social hierarchies (Hall 1989).” Despite the widespread

acknowledgement that these identities were interdigitated, describing the mutual

imbrication of social categories in ways that do not implicitly or explicitly treat at least

one particular axis of identity as foundational is a task that is rarely accomplished.

Race, class, and gender may not be appropriate axes through which to study all

archaeological sites (Lucas 2006). Nevertheless, I frame much of my writing around

the three “canonical” categories of identity - race, class, and gender - and build my

work from that of archaeologists and historians who write from one or another of these

categories. This is because the historical data and primary sources that I work with

from North America, Australia, and New Zealand make it very clear that contestations

about race, gender, and class were all incredibly potent rhetorical and political devices

that had currency in media, rhetoric, and legislation concerning non-Chinese

imaginations of Chinese and Chinese American bodies, artifacts, and society (Takaki

28
1989; Lowe 1996; Eng 2001; Pfaelzer 2007). The circuits of power and subjectivity in

California during the 19th century flowed through these three “ordering” discourses of

modernity in ways that were clearly salient for the residents of the Point Alones

Village and for their non-Chinese neighbors.

That being said, my understanding of identity and its various elaborations

draws heavily on the work of scholars who have attended to the performative,

citational, open, and historically contingent character of those identities. In the work of

scholars who have sifted through social arrangements in different times and places, we

learn that identities need not be fixed to timeless essences or neatly mapped onto

“natural” facts in order to be powerfully deployed in social and political contexts (e.g.

Taussig 1986; Rosaldo 1989; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; McClintock 1995;

Hansen 2001). Race mattered to the Point Alones residents. Gender also mattered.

Class mattered too. But they mattered in ways that were different from the ways that

they mattered for people who did not live at the Point Alones Village. The

mechanisms through which these social typologies remain coherent over time, despite

their situatedness and locality, is a critical topic for archaeological interpretation and is

one that I address later in this chapter.

THE OVERSEAS CHINESE

For archaeologists studying overseas Chinese communities in North America,

Australia, and New Zealand, the axis of identity upon which other identities are

layered is almost always race (though some publications refer to Chinese identity in

terms of “ethnicity”). Although some publications directly address gender (Lydon

29
1999, Williams 2008) or class (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001) in these communities,

these other modes of identity are framed within a social category that is fundamentally

“othered” in an explicit manner primarily through discourses and rhetorics of race.

The fronting of race as the foundational axis of an overseas Chinese identity is both a

reflection of “logics of difference” that were in place during the time period of the late

19th and early 20th centuries and are a reflection of longstanding Western models of

Chinese racial “othernesss” that hinge on the the word “Chinese” referring to both a

geographic place of origin that also happens to be a territorialized nation, China, and a

racial category.

The mutual subsumption of race and national identity is not simply a Western

projection onto Chinese geographies and bodies. Chinese discourses often understood

the potential for Chinese national belonging to be imbricated with a race-like identity.

For example, in its first nationality law the Qing government of China considered

descendants of ethnic Chinese along the male line to be eligible for citizenship,

regardless of their place of birth or residence (Poston and Yu 1990: 482).

Historical archaeologists have built powerful conceptualizations of race,

working to understand how racial difference, established in consort with colonial

endeavors (Stoler 2002), was reflected and created in location situations (Singleton

1999; Delle et al. 2000; Orser 2001; 2004). While these conceptualizations are

powerful and productive, explicit theorizing of racial identity among Chinese and

Chinese Americans within archaeology remains underdeveloped. In the following

section I discuss anthropological conceptualizations of race, focusing on productive

ways that historical archaeologists have deployed the concept.

30
RACE

The Point Alones Village is regularly called an “overseas Chinese” village and

I write within a subfield of archaeology that is regularly called “overseas Chinese”

archaeology. This moniker immediately obscures much of the social differentiation

within these communities. Almost all of the communities that existed in the United

States, Australia, and China that have been called “overseas Chinese” included

individuals who were not born in China and individuals who had never been to China

and many included individuals from a variety of different ethnic or racialized groups

(both ethnic groups found within China and ethnic groups from outside of China). For

example, at least one African American woman is known to have lived at the Point

Alones Village (see Chapter 5). Despite the clear racialization of these heterogeneous

communities, the social process of racialization is rarely attended to in overseas

Chinese studies (Orser 2004).

In American historical archaeology, the study of racial difference has often

been paired with or framed against the study of ethnic identity (Epperson 2000; Orser

2001; Mullins 1999, 2010; Voss 2008a; Wilkie 2000). Explaining the difference

between current conceptualizations between race and ethnicity, Voss (2008a: 28)

writes that currently “race is generally understood as distinct from ethnicity in that

racialization naturalizes social difference through reference to bodily attributes -

notably skin color, but also hair, facial features, and physique - and racial distinctions

generally rest on arguments of congenital inferiority or superiority. Race thus builds

31
on the assumption that personhood is determined by hereditary characteristics that

differ systematically according to perceived physical criteria”

Attention to this distinction is readily seen in the well-developed literature on

the archaeological analysis of African diasporic and African American communities.

Scholars specializing in the archaeological study of African diasporic communities

have developed sophisticated understandings about the relationships between race,

ethnicity, history, and material culture - focusing on topics such as “the analysis and

representation of cultural identity, race, gender, and class; cultural interaction and

change; relations of power and domination; and the sociopolitics of archaeological

practice” (Singleton 1999: 1). Many of these debates engage with the distinction

between race and ethnicity and the manner though which archaeologists should

identify and write about these differences. Many scholars studying in African diaporic

and African American archaeology are wary of framing difference, especially

difference within and between racialized groups, in ethnic terms, arguing that it has

“de-emphasized or replaced race as a social construct in analyses of cultural

phenomena. Yet the use of ethnicity has often failed to specify the conditions under

which social groups subordinated as “racially” distinct emerge and persist” (Singleton

1999: 2). Many of these scholars have drawn from the literature of African American

studies to make the point that “although the analysis of race as a social construction is

valid and important, it should not be deployed to deny the ‘reality’ of race or racism,

nor should it be used to belittle the concerns of minority descendant communities”

(Epperson 2000: 105). On the other hand, scholars who focus on ethnic identity are

wary that a focus on racialization gives an epistemic monopoly to hegemonic Western

32
discourses and forecloses upon the possibility for racialized groups to affirmatively

construct their own identities. A focus on identity, some of these scholars claim, will

“help to counter the pervasive dismissal of African contributions to American cultural

life” (Wilkie et al. 2010: 261).

Concern about failing to attend to power and domination on one hand, and

resistance and localized meanings on the other, are both valid. Both race and ethnicity

are two interconnected power-laden discourses that were articulated at specific sites in

space and time. Instead of trying to find how people expressed or were made to

express an underlying race or ethnicity, the focus might be on how people, objects,

and landscapes were arranged to produce and reiterate the social categories that we

call “race” or “ethnicity” and what effects that production and reiteration might have

had on other sites and bodies.

In that vein, this study seeks to understand how discourses of race and

ethnicity were deployed by both the Chinese residents of the Point Alones Village and

by their non-Chinese neighbors. I pay particular attention to how material culture and

individuals from the site were racialized in specific ways and how that racialization

relied upon and produced other powerful discourses such as gender and nation.

GENDER

Archaeological studies of the overseas Chinese almost always start from a

position that assumes a prior racialization of the site in question, but explicit attention

gendered identities are rare in archaeological reports and publications on the Chinese

overseas (but see Wegars 1993b; Lydon 1999; Williams 2008). This is true despite the

33
fact that race and gender in the 19th century were so interdigitated that it was often

difficult for historical observers to parse them apart (Haraway 1989; Stoler 1995;

McClintock 1995). Historical research with the Chinese has demonstrated that gender

was clearly an incredibly important category through which overseas Chinese

individuals imagined themselves and through which their non-Chiense neighbors

imagined Chinese individuals and the racial/national category of “the Chinese” as a

whole (Ong 1999; Eng 2001; Williams 2008).

I suspect that gender has been significantly understudied among overseas

Chinese communities because of a historical androcentric tendency to equate gender

with women, leaving men and masculinity as an unmarked “norm” (Gutmann 1996)

Because overseas Chinese communities were predominantly communities of men, an

explicit attention to gendered identities has been left aside from many archaeological

studies of these places (but see Williams 2008). When gender is discussed, it is usually

in terms of the disparate activities of men and women (Wegars 1993b).

This lacuna does not extend across archaeological research. Scholars

examining gender in other contexts have attended to the ways that gendered identities

were mapped onto both male and female bodies and how gendered discourses were

established through artifacts, often without direct reference to sexed bodies (Joyce

2000; Wilkie 2010).

A topic that is critical for understanding the presence and effect of gendered

identities at the Point Alones Village is how, from the 18th century to the present, the

highly gendered language of domesticity was omnipresent in writings, debates, and

34
discussions about national identity (Stoler 1991; Sinha 1995; Yegenoglu 1998; Enloe

2000; Mayer 2000; Horne 2004; Greenburg 2005).

Many of the scholars who study the relationships between domesticity, gender,

and the nation emphasize the deep imbrication of masculinity in all of these

discourses. For example, Said (1979) writes about how the West represents itself as

masculine through the creation of a feminized, sexualized other and how this

“knowledge” is a constituent part of the logic of colonialism. McClintock (1995: 5)

explains the ways gender, race, and class “come into existence in and through relation

to each other.” She argues that these discourses and the related concepts of

domesticity and masculinity are integral features of colonialism and imperialism.

Enloe (2000) studies how masculinity, gender, and sexuality structure the nation,

colonialism, and international politics. Although these three authors come from

radically different theoretical backgrounds and write about very different geographic

“subjects,” they all emphasize the complex ways in which masculinity is intimately

enmeshed in discourses of domesticity, colonialism, and the nation.

In the following chapters, I attend to the question of how these related

discourses were created and interpreted ‘on the ground’ at the Point Alones Village.

Lowe (1996: 12) has argued that orientalist constructions of Chinese

masculinities that took place during the time period I study have resulted in a

contemporary discourse of “Chinese ‘masculinity’ whose racialization is the material

trace of the history of this “‘gendering.’” Eng (2001) has explained how

representations of Chinese masculinities salient in the late 19th century remain so

today. An archaeology of overseas Chinese communities provides the perfect

35
opportunity to examine the genealogy of these still-salient gendered representations as

they occurred in the late 19th century.

CLASS

Like race and gender, class was clearly an important component of debates and

discussions about the overseas Chinese during the 19th and 20th centuries. Explicit

references to class and the Chinese in California were common in texts and newspaper

articles from during the time (e.g. Young 1909).

In addition to their interpolation into the class-laden economic system of

California, the Chinese also had to engage with a non-Chinese culture that had long

marked the consumption of expensive “exotic” Chinese-produced and Chinese-

looking goods as an affirmative statement of class identity (effective or not) (Wall

1993; Porter 1999; 2002; 2010; Williams 2008). Suddenly, Western individuals who

came to California were confronted with the actual individuals whose country and

products had long been associated with luxury and respectability. The details of this

encounter and the resulting unfolding and unpacking of these class-related discourses

is a critical topic and can help us to understand how longstanding hegemonic

discourses change with intercultural encounters.

When archaeologists studying the Chinese overseas do attend to class, it is

usually within a framework that either maps Western class identities onto the Chinese

or that ejects them from the American imaginary of class identity. In the former case,

the Chinese are divided into a dual-class system - usually along the merchant/worker

line where their class is imagined to map onto their position as either a (quazi-

36
proletariat) laborer or a (quazi-bourgeoise) merchant. In the latter, they were viewed

as an alien “other” whose only interpolation into the American class system is a

convenient source of cheap labor for capital and/or as a convenient scapegoat used by

non-Chinese unions and labor to bolster class solidarity among white workingmen and

women.

Even if it has not had much of an explicit impact on the archaeology of

Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, many historical archaeologists have

developed explicit theorizations of class even if, as Wurst (1999: 7) suggests, “the

most obvious way historical archaeologists have dealt with class is avoidance.” These

can be broadly classified into class conceptions framed in Marxist terms and those

framed in non-Marxist terms (Wurst 2006). For Marx and many of his followers, class

is the fundamental social relation. Class, in a Marxist sense, is the position that

individuals and social groups occupy with regard to the economic relations of

production (Marx 1976). Essentially, one’s class is an objectification of one’s labor.

Under this framework, unfolding, dialectical contestations and relationships between

classes are the motor that drives historical change. As Marx and Engels (1978: 473)

famously explained: the “history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class

struggle.” Many, though certainly not all, Marxists take the foundational character of

class identity as always in the last instance determinative of one’s agency. Mao

Zedong (1966: 3) outlines this position when he writes: “In class society, everyone

lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception,

is stamped with the brand of a class.”

37
 The different strands and elaborations of Marxist and Marxian thought are

voluminous and detailed, but the genealogy that has perhaps had the most impact on

historical archaeology is Marxist thought filtered through the lens of Critical Theory

and the Frankfurt school (Leone 1982 1984, 1995, 2005; Leone et al. 1987, Shackel et

al 1998; Mullins 1999, Wilkie and Bartoy 2000). These scholars tend to focus on the

ways that material culture, including architecture and landscapes, were used to

implement and naturalize powerful ideological concepts through which subordinated

groups “become convinced that they shared the elite class’s interests and should also

share its way of describing the world” (Mullins 1998: 18). Of course, these

archaeologists realize that dominate ideologies are not always totalizing and

archaeologists working through these frameworks have attended to the “subtle yet

significant ways in which ideologies are embraced, accepted, modified, and rejected”

(Mullins 1998: 19) through both organized and everyday resistance.

Wurst (2006: 191) outlines another mode of approaching class in historical

archaeology - one that treats it as a “thing” that one can have (such as a certain

income, type of employment, or expensive ceramics). In these studies, class is seen as

“an attribute of individual identity - a choice that can be changed as simply as

employment” or as “an unchallenged category which people express through freely

chosen material symbols” (Wurst 2006: 193). Wurst finds these definitions of class to

be quite troubling on both a theoretical and a political level. At a theoretical level, they

have trouble accounting for systemic oppression and culture change. At a political

level, they are suspicious of a model of global capitalism that posit autonomous,

consuming individuals as the sole agentive force (McGuire and Wurst 2002).

38
 While remaining sympathetic to Wurst’s critique, I have come to find an

either/or conceptualization of class that posits the category as either reflecting a

“underlying social relations” or “an attribute of individual identity” difficult to square

with the historical and archaeological record as I found it at Point Alones. I have a

difficult time reading the history of the Point Alones Village through accounts of

political and personal subjectivity that posit the class identity or position as the

primary, fundamental, or “real” class position (with other forms of identification being

either epiphenomenal or examples of an Althusserian (1994) “ideological state

apparatus”). Marxist thinkers since at least as early as Gramsci (1971) have hinted at

this problem when they question the necessary link between one’s objective ‘class

position’ and one’s subjectivity, but even these thinkers still articulate ideology with

an objective economic position that is ultimately the ‘real’ substance of class, even

when ideology strays away from the roots or the real, those roots still remain. As

Althusser (1994: 122) wrote: “I think it is possible to hold that ideologies have a

history of their own (although it is determined in the last instance by the class

struggle).”

With Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and contrary to the warnings of some Marxist

scholars, I suggest that questioning the essential character of class or of the need to

have identities always be determined “in the last instance” by “relations of

production” does not open the door to a theory of atomized individuals whose

identities can be expressed “through freely chosen material symbols.” Instead,

discourses such as class, race, and gender become powerful ordering typologies

through their concrete articulation at specific sites and through specific bodies and

39
artifacts. As Foucault (1965, 1972, 1978a, 1978b) and Butler (1990, 1993) repeatedly

and forcefully argued, and contrary to reactionary claims that “there is no such thing

as society,” recognizing the historically contingent nature of discourses and their

“invented” quality does not render them powerless or allow rational individuals to

simply choose to ignore them. Instead, subjects are prefigured by discourses that are

made real through practice.

With this in mind, I understand one’s “class” to be the naturalization of social

difference and political inequality though discourses that primary articulate with labor

and economic activities. This formulation allows me to understand how the Chinese

and Chinese Americans at the Point Alones Village occupied a class position that at

first glance seems disarticulated from the class position of similarly situated Anglo

laborers but in actuality was deeply intertwined with multiple complex discourses

engendered by the encounters that were occurring in 19th and 20th century California.

As with race and gender, acknowledging the contingent and performative

aspects of social identity is not to claim that “anything goes.” Power and history flow

through discourses of class. Subjects are always at least partially constituted through

their personal histories and social positionalities. Perhaps because the critique of race

has such deep roots in the discipline of anthropology (Boas 1945; Mead et al. 1968),

archaeologists seem more willing to reconcile the “fictive” characters of race with the

“real” character of race; to imagine race as something that is “citational” and

“performative” while also understanding that it has a history with material

consequences. Race is not something that one can escape through force of will or by

purchasing novel objects and modifying one’s “ethnic” or “racial” aesthetics. In the

40
same vein, people may attempt to “change” their class identity through the simple

display of ceramics, but I think archaeologists would be hard pressed to argue that the

strategic display of ceramics alone was ever enough to divorce a historical subject

from his or her past class identities.

Perhaps the best way to frame this switch is to understand it as a move away

from treating identities such as class, race, and gender as components that are

constituted by individuals. Instead, it is an examination of how these forms of

identification constitute individuals as subjects. Das (2006: 4) explains how the quality

of subjectivity itself allows for these discourses to be both incredibly powerful and

indeterminate when she posits that “concrete relations that we establish in living with

others are like shadows of the more abstract questions - that is, we learn about the

nature of the world in the process of such living[...] we cannot assign a scale to

patterns of sociality independent of perspective. Indeed, to be able to establish a

perspective is to enlarge the field of our vision. The question, then, is not that of part-

whole relations but of establishing the horizon within which we may place the

constituent objects of a description in their relation to each other and in relation to the

eye with which they are seen.”

The individuals who lived at the Point Alones Village were articulated with a

series of Chinese and non-Chinese class positions. Their status as racially marked

laborers structured much of the conflict between the Chinese fishermen and their non-

Chinese neighbors. In later chapters I explore how the tensions between these different

class positions resulted in the formation of situational articulations and, ultimately,

novel identities.

41
IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTIVE BUNDLING

Having proposed that each of these different categories of identity (and surely

more) were polyvalent, situational, and contingent, the question of coherence and

reproduction comes to the fore. How are identities such as “the Chinese,” or

“laborers,” or “immigrants” given historical force and coherence? If there is no

“natural” or essential character that always already determines the features of any of

these social groups, how do they form? How do they connect with each other? and

how do they stay “relevant” over long time frames and great geographic distance?

I propose that the answers to those questions are archaeological in character

insofar as they center on the mutual dependence of discourse and material culture.

These discourses are formed into hegemonic structures that have political and social

force, compelling bodies and identities. Hegemonic structures are bundles of objects,

aesthetics, dispositions, and actions that together overdetermine subjects. In order to

be perpetuated, these hegemonic structures must be repeatedly articulated at various

sites - the artifact, the body, the archaeological site, the text. It is this citational process

- the concrete articulation of overdetermined identities - that both engenders coherent

historical narrative and allows for social change.

Coherent social typologies such as racial classifications are embedded into and

are drawn from real events at historically specific sites. These locations serve as the

sites of citation for discursive formations that travel through regional and global

circuits. What is cited is not the site as a whole, but rather, a selective bundling of

prefigured components of the site – sometimes physical components and sometimes

42
narrative components. Because of this necessary partiality, archaeological practice

provides both a methodology and a theoretical apparatus for deconstructing and re-

contextualizing these discursive productions.

DISCOURSE AND HEGEMONY

In a February 10, 1907 article printed in the Kansas City Star, the author

wrote: “Chinatown does its own things in its own way. That way is not the American

way. In nine cases out of ten it is not even a way that an American could understand.”

In a 2006 interview of congressional representative Tom Tancredo by a conservative

news source that was remarked upon in the November 27th issue of the Miami Herald,

the Congressman said: “Look at what has happened to Miami. It has become a Third

World country,” he said. “You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace. You

would never know you're in the United States of America. You would certainly say

you're in a Third World country.”

These two quotes were written almost a hundred years apart, but their

rhetorical techniques and affective aspirations are eerily similar. Together they

articulate a concrete historical narrative about the dangers of “foreign” bodies,

buildings, and aesthetics for the coherence of the United States as a national entity.

That this single trope can incite political mobilization in such disparate times (and be

applied to subjects who occupy different racial “slots” - Chinese on one hand and

Hispanic/Latin American on the other) speaks to the power of discourses to cohere

across great spatial and temporal distances.

43
 With Foucault, I understand discourse to be more than the formal structures of

a spoken or written language. Instead, it is “the interplay of the rules that make

possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time” (Foucault 1972: 32-

33). Although the “objects” that Foucault discusses are not necessarily artifacts per se

(thy can equally be objectified concepts such as “madness” or “sexuality”), these

discursive formations allow bodies and artifacts with a material presence to be spoken

about and made sense of through their circulation, repetition, and juxtaposition with

other objects, bodies, and concepts. As these discourses iterate through time, different

components, aesthetics, bodies, and objects are incorporated or left aside (Butler

1999). As Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 40) write, “a discursive structure is not a merely

‘cognitive’ or ‘contemplative’ entity; it is an articulatory practice which constitutes

and organizes social relations.”

But why is a small Chinese fishing village on the margins of the Chinese and

American empires an appropriate location to study the formation, articulation, and

effects of these modernist categories of identity? In the next section I explain the

importance of locating discursive practices in “marginal” spaces, and explore the

productive force of theorizing from overlooked and forgotten geographies.

MARGINALITY AND POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITY

California during the 19th century is an useful place for thinking through these

problems because it was a space undergoing rapid re-territorialization. The formal

apparatuses of United States governance were being established in fits and starts, and

44
the role of California in the American imaginary was as a place that Tsing (2004: 28)

might call a “zone of not yet.” That is to say, "not yet mapped, not yet regulated.”

Tsing (1993, 2000) demonstrates that the spaces where local and global

processes articulate provide particularly compelling anthropological subjects. The

argument seems apropos to archaeologists as well. By analyzing articulations between

the “local” and the “global” archaeologists can contribute to wider debates on the

forms and natures of these articulations. Though this engagement I can begin to

answer questions like: how, exactly, were discourses like “Victorian domesticity,” and

“The Nation” constituted through mediations between material culture, the

enunciatory practices of everyday life, and hegemonic discourses of identity?

Marginal geographies, and particularly the marginal topographies of the

Western United States, play a central role in Hardt and Negri’s history and theory of

Empire. They argue that the “constitutional project” of the United States and its

expansive democratic tendency was the historical antecedent to the modern social

forms they term “empire” and “multitude.” This expansive tendency moved outward

“with extraordinary force” (Hardt and Negri 2000: 165), bringing into its domain the

formerly “open” and “empty” spaces of the Western Frontier. Unlike the expansive

force of classical European Imperialism, a force that confronted and subjugated

“others” in their pre-existing political places, the American constitutional project

created novel spaces into which a nascent multitude could move and, as a result,

allowed the United States to displace its internal conflicts into spatial mobility. This

was, in their words the expansion of “democratic logics.”

45
 Of course, this emptiness was manufactured from the outset. Imagining the

westward expansion of the United States as a penetration into and empty and wild

territory, a “frontier of liberty” (Hardt and Negri 2000: 169), was predicated on racial

and gendered exclusions,such as wholesale dispossession of Native Americans

(Cronon 1983). This required Native Americans to be imagined to be imagined as a

part of nature and, as such, impossible subjects of this fundamentally expansive and

emancipatory democracy, a point made clear by Hardt and Negri (2000: 169). Putting

aside the historical accuracy of this argument for a moment, the fundamental point that

Hardt and Negri make is that Empire in the contemporary world is essentially a

technical elaboration of this sovereign system - a system that requires marginal spaces

to move into.

According to Hardt and Negri, after this expansive tendency was rendered

impossible by the “closing” of the Western frontier, the embryonic forces of Empire

and the Multitude reacted in two ways that had lasting force. One strand is a

conversion of the constitutional order to European style imperialism – here the

Spanish American war seems to be used as the emblematic moment. The other strand

is what they term the “international expansion of the network power of the

constitution” (Hardt and Negri 2000: 175). Both of these genealogies of Empire and

the Multitude are predicated on the belief that capitalism and constitutional democracy

must find a geographic ‘outside’ in which to penetrate. The fundamental difference is

that the former creates hierarchies of space. In the former position, the “outside”

geographies are rendered as peripheral spaces that economically and socially support

production and consumption in the metropole. In the latter, there is no center or

46
periphery, there is only an inside and an outside; a space that has been homogenized

and domesticated, and a space that has yet to be homogenized and domesticated.

Hardt and Negri’s theory, like most comprehensive summaries of historical

epochs, is elegant. History, driven by the invisible hand of capital development, is

represented in key persons and decisive events. Things move forward more-or-less

evenly and at scales that tend towards the macro and global.

But what happens if we reject the top-down notion of social and political

production and instead ask how these different techniques of sovereignty woven

around specific locations? Is there any productive force that is located in the margins?

Are these spaces really all that empty? How did California move from the margins to

the periphery, and whose bodies, lives, and villages were implicated in that process?

Did California really become a domain within the territoriality of the American body

politic, or were spaces within California constituted as what Stoler (1997) has called

an “interior frontier.”

By asking these questions at the Point Alones Village, I hope to illustrate how

this “small and sleepy” Chinese and Chinese American fishing village was a potent

location for the configuration and reconfiguration of encounters and identities and

how, at some level, the story of Point Alones reveals the logics of the story of

modernity.

47
 CHAPTER 2: SITES OF FRICTION

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CHINESE DIASPORA

This section situates the arguments that I weave around the history and the

archaeology of the Point Alones Village within the disciplinary genealogy of

“overseas Chinese” archaeology. These are studies that attend to the material remains

generated by the global migrations of Chinese individuals during the 19th and 20th

centuries. In this genealogy I focus on the theories, methodologies, and research

questions that articulate with or prefigure the concerns attended to in this dissertation.

Instead of comprehensively reviewing the literature as a whole, a task done quite well

elsewhere (Voss 2005; Voss and Allen 2008; Allen and Schulz 2008), I focus on key

studies and illustrative moments.

The 19th century emigration of Chinese individuals from South China was

global in character (Pan 1990). While archaeologists from different countries have

engaged with the material remains and cultural consequences of this migration, these

studies have tended to occur within national frameworks and very little transnational

comparative work has been conducted. Because of the varying agendas and research

strategies of archaeologists working in different national traditions, the locations that

have been archaeologically explored do not mirror the geographic contours of the 19th

century global migration. For example, I have been unable to locate archaeological

studies of Chinese diasporic communities in Peru or Indonesia even though large

numbers of Chinese individuals moved to those countries during this time period

(Wong 1978; Fernando and Bulbeck 1992). Indeed, I have looked quite extensively

48
for archaeological studies of Chinese diasporic communities in Sumatra, but I have yet

to find any reference to the topic. Trigger (1989) has demonstrated that the national

tradition in which archaeological research takes place has a substantial impact on the

kinds of research questions asked and the methods employed. The nationally bounded

character of most archaeological research focusing on overseas Chinese communities

has the potential to obscure the transnational links and hybrid identities that Chinese

immigrants and Chinese diasporic populations, including individuals living in the

Point Alones Village, were clearly building. The scarcity of multi-sited studies that

cross national boundaries severely hampers the development of an overseas Chinese

archaeology that effectively attends to the transnational character of the Chinese

migration, it perpetuates a binaric East/West dualism, and it inhibits cross-cultural

studies.

In this section I draw out the dominant themes and narratives that have shaped

archaeological studies of overseas Chinese communities. A large and increasing

number of books, chapters, articles, and site reports that deal with archaeological

research on Chinese and Chinese immigrant communities have been published. While

some of these texts are widely available, most were only published in very limited

runs and are difficult to locate. Readers seeking a bibliography on the topic are urged

to consult Allen’s (2008) article in the Historical Archaeology thematic volume on

Chinese American and Chinese Diasporic archaeology edited by Voss and Williams

(2008) or to consult the resources of the Asian American Comparative Collection at

the University of Idaho, an excellent source for “grey literature” materials and hard to

find publications on overseas Chinese archaeology. Readers seeking a short

49
engagement with the history and challenges facing overseas Chinese archaeology are

urged to consult Voss’s (2005) overview of the state of the subfield.

In 1982, McGuire surveyed the state of “studies of ethnic groups in historical

archaeology” and concluded that three research themes dominated the literature. These

were assimilation studies, ethnic pride studies, and studies that attempt to establish

criteria for identifying specific ethnic groups (McGuire 1982). In the almost thirty

years since this article was written this typology still accurately encompasses most of

the research being pushed by archaeologists working at overseas Chinese sites (but

see, among other exceptions, Lydon 1999; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001; Voss and

Williams 2008; Ross 2009, 2010b). Specifically, questions about assimilation remain

foregrounded in the literature on overesas Chinese communities (Voss and Allen

2008). These themes are read through an analytic that focuses on the relationship of

artifacts and assemblages to ethnic or racial identity.

In the next component of this section I outline how these three themes have

been established and perpetuated in archaeological texts by engaging with the earliest

studies of overseas Chinese communities. I then point to several illustrative studies,

explaining how these themes have been variously challenged and perpetuated.

EARLY ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDIES

Although the archaeological investigation of overseas Chinese and Chinese

American communities in the United States remains understudied in academic

archaeology (Orser 2004; Voss 2005) the topic has lurked at the margins of the

discipline and has long fascinated archaeologists, particularly those who work in

50
cultural resource management contexts in the Western United States where “exotic

looking” material culture from overseas Chinese communities are commonly found

(Mullins 2008). When studies of the overseas Chinese have entered broader

archaeological discourse, it has usually been as one of a number of “case studies” in

processes of racialization or exclusion (Orser 2004, 2007).

The trend to frame overseas Chinese studies first and foremost through a

“racial” or “ethnic” lens (discussed in the previous chapter) was embedded in the

earliest studies on the topic written by archaeologists. One of the first widely

published explorations of Chinese American history written by an archaeologist is not

itself an analysis of an archaeological site. Instead, it is an historical overview of race

and racism in California written in 1971 by U.C. Berkeley archaeologists Robert

Heizer and Alan Almquist. Although the bulk of their other work is archaeological, the

authors felt the need to write a history of prejudice and discrimination in California

because, in their words:

Historians have been aware that racial prejudice was displayed by California
whites, but in general they have treated the subject as though it was an
unimportant one, perhaps because race prejudice in the last century was not
always considered inhumane in the collective conscience of Americans (Heizer
and Almquist 1971: preface).

As a survey of racism and discrimination throughout the history of California, the

book attends to the experiences faced by many racialized groups in California and is

not limited to discrimination in the American period of California history. Heizer and

Almquist discuss racism in California history by referencing concrete historical

51
incidents of prejudice and violent racism as well as discussing the systemic feature of

California government and constitutional order that engendered and promoted racist

ideology. For example, by expounding upon the debates concerning the position that

Black and Indian individuals would have in the state of California that were held

during the drafting and ratification of the California Constitution. They explain how

racism, even institutional racism, was never something that was supported by all the

white citizens of California but instead was codified and enacted through a contested

and heterogeneous process. According to Heizer and Almquist, hegemonic racist

ideology may have been in place throughout California, but it was applied and

accepted (or not) in ways that were variegated and locally specific. The authors also

briefly discuss the role of academic ethnology and anthropology in these debates. For

example, they write:

The present authors, as anthropologists, find the reversal of the original

decision in the Hall case of particular interest because of the use of an
ethnological arguments to prove that Chinese and American Indians are
racially related on the presumption that the American Indians belong to the
Mongoloid race and originally migrated to the New World from Asia (Heizer
and Almquist 1971: 129).

Although the text is primarily presented as a descriptive history it is additionally

notable for its unstated theoretical foreshadowings. By framing racial exclusion as a

contested process they foreshadow later debates that trouble direct relationships

between the state, the nation, and racial discourses. By discussing shifts in Anglo-

Californian attitudes towards “Spanish-American” culture after colonization, they

articulate with a larger discourse in California history drawn from McWilliams’s

52
(1946, 1949) that foreshadows what Renato Rosaldo (1989) would come to call

“imperialist nostalgia.”

Heizer and Almquist’s approach to the history of anti-Chinese racism and

discrimination is primarily contained in a chapter devoted to “The Early Legal Status

of the Chinese.” They catalog various reactions from non-Chinese Californians to the

Chinese presence in California, with a particular focus on the official state and

national level legislation that codified racist exclusionary policies. Specifically, they

discuss how the discourse of “yellow peril” was employed by politicians to shape

legislation being enacted at the national level and how enacting legalized racism was a

process that required political collaboration between a diverse group of national

legislators, some of whose states seemed to have no immediate stake in the

immigration debate.

An important point that Heizer and Almquist make, and that is often glossed

over in studies that focus more narrowly on anti-Chinese racism and violence, is how

the legal and cultural forms of discrimination that the Chinese faced were redeployed

(with minor contextual changes) against other racialized groups later in California

history. For example, the authors explain how following Chinese exclusion large

numbers of Japanese immigrants came to California. The narrative that follows is

striking familiar:

The Japanese, now permitted to emigrate from their homeland through removal
of this prohibition by the newly restored emperor, began to cross the Pacific,
and there was a ready acceptance of them in California as supplements to the
cheap Chinese labor, which was in short supply. Within a few years the

53
 Chinese stereotype was shifted to the Japanese, and with it all the prejudice
plus a new body of discriminatory legislation (Heizer and Almquist 1971: 177)

While they clearly note the persistence and modification of hegemonic discourses in

their text, they fail to account for a mechanism for ether that persistence or that

modification.

This book was clearly a groundbreaking text and it served as both a necessary

corrective and a strong foundation for future research. However, Heizer and

Almquist’s focus on legislative, legal, and constitutional issues to the exclusion of

both political economy and the face-to-face local interactions in communities glosses

over the embedded “sites of articulation” which both generated these political

processes and were, in turn, changed and modified by these political processes.

Archaeologists over the next thirty years have attempted to engage in these localized

processes, and often lose the important insights about structural racism and hegemonic

processes that Heizer and Almquist thoroughly chronicle. In the next section I will

discuss some of these attempts, focusing on the models of identity that have been

employed to imagine “overseas Chinese” individuals and communities and I explore

the impacts that these models have on interpretations of history and the past.

PROJECT DRIVEN ARCHAEOLOGY

The vast majority of the archaeology of overseas Chinese communities in the

United States during the past 30 years has been driven by the concerns and constraints

of development-oriented archaeology and cultural resource management (Greenwood

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1993). Contrary to the assumptions of some academic archaeologists, many of these

projects have been methodologically rigorous and the project leaders, excavators, and

report-writers often attend to theoretical concerns in sophisticated and novel ways and

many of these projects have resulted in peer-reviewed and/or popular press

publications (for examples see Greenwood 1996; Praetzellis et al. 1997; Praetzellis

and Praetzellis 1997; Praetzellis et al. 2004; Karskens 1999; Costello 2000; Yamin

2000; Baxter and Allen 2002).

Despite these exceptional achievements, work conducted in a contract stetting

faces unique constraints that shape the direction of research including budgetary

restrictions, truncated deadlines for publication, research design targeted towards

demonstrating the “significance” of a site, and limited publishing venues. Just as the

social and political context of academic archaeology needs to be taken into account

when we examine archaeological studies generated from within those institutions

(McGuire and Walker 1999), so too should the social, political, and economic factors

guiding contract archaeology be taken into account as we interpret and evaluate

reports and findings generated in these contexts.

ASSEMBLAGES AND ETHNIC MARKERS

The analysis of Chinese produced and Chinese looking material culture and

interpretations of the relationships this material has to ethnic or racial identity are the

topics that most commonly frame archaeological research about 19th and 20th century

global Chinese migrations. Early studies sought to establish the national provenience

of artifacts and build descriptive catalogs of objects that could be associated with

55
Chinese sites and, by extension, to Chinese identity. For example, Ritchie’s

comprehensive work in New Zealand on the “Clutha power project” in the Otago

region had as its explicit goal “to produce detailed studies of particular artifact

categories which others could build on” (Ritchie 1991: 3). These studies generally

used the presence (or absence) of Chinese produced artifacts to identify “ethnically

Chinese” occupation sites (Staski 1985). Over time, the theoretical orientation of many

studies shifted as archaeologists began to formulate theories of culture change,

primarily by using artifacts (primarily ceramics, but also glass, “small finds,”

architecture, and food ways) to determine the degree to which Chinese individuals and

communities living overseas had “assimilated,” (Lister and Lister 1989), and the

degree to which they maintained “cultural conservatism.” Many of these scholars have

realized that artifacts were sometimes strategically deployed for what McGuire (1982:

174) has called “ethnic boundary maintenance” or to reinforce “the disparity in power

between ethnic groups” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001). Recently, scholars have also

been exploring how artifacts and race or ethnicity may have co-constituted one

another in situational contexts (Lydon 1999) and have expanded their questions to ask

if the relationships betweens artifacts and ethnicity were stable across sites and times

or were reactions “to local circumstances and fluctuations in the economy” (Allen et al

2002).

Even in the early days of archaeological reports of the overseas Chinese, there

was hope that these archaeological studies could contribute to historical studies of the

Chinese diaspora as well as general theories and models of identity. Typical of this

approach is the analysis of a Chinese feature at the Malakoff Diggins State park

56
conducted during a 1979 State of California contract project. Introducing the topic

with great hope for the theoretical relevance of archaeological research, the report

concludes:

The material record of the Chinese population of the North Bloomfield vicinity
is of critical historical significance, in spite of its unimposing appearance.
Further study can yield insight into the everyday lives and roles of the Chinese
people as miners, producers, merchants, and consumers, operating within the
context of a foreign culture. These are themes poorly reported in the written
(English language) historic record, but are critical to an understanding and
appreciation of California’s complex multi-ethnic social and economic heritage
(California Department of Parks and Recreation 1979: 49)

Unfortunately, these publications rarely lived up to their promise and early excavation

reports usually contained little more than a listing of various artifacts found, their

intra-site provenience, and a few paragraphs of speculation about the degree to which

residents of the site had acculturated.

Early reports focusing on overseas Chinese archaeological sites often took the

link between material culture and identity as an uncontested and unmediated fact: “it is

generally accepted that archaeological materials can be sensitive indicators of the

degrees to which ethnic groups maintain separate identities or assimilate with each

other and into dominant society” (Staski 1985: 16). For example, Lister and Lister

(1989) framed their research questions around the relationship of artifacts and

assemblages to ethnic identity, using Chinese and non-Chinese artifacts to suggest

cultural conservatism and assimilation, respectively. These reports also attempted to

engage with intra-ethnic status differentiation, though without much success. For

57
example, Lister and Lister note that, despite making intra-ethnic status differentiation

as central component of their research, they were unable to substantiate that sort of

distinction through the results of their excavations. They did not claim that this was

because social stratification was absent. Instead, they pointed towards communal

depositional contexts that obscured variability. In their words: “it is notable that all

Chinese items within any category were of the same kinds and calibers, making it

impossible to distinguish ‘capitalist’ Chan’s discards form those of the lowliest

sojourner who lived across the street in a crowded tenement” (Lister and Lister note

1989: 108).

In recent years, archaeologists have built on the studies from the 1970s and

1980s and archaeologists working in both contract and academic settings have begun

to push away from theories of archaeology that posit neat correlations between ethnic

identity and the use of material culture from a specific region, country, or with a

certain “ethnic” aesthetic. A particularly important turning point for the filed occurred

in 1993 when Priscilla Wegars edited the book Hidden Heritage (Wegars 1993a). This

edited volume brought together 14 articles that addressed the history and archaeology

of the overseas Chinese from a variety of rural and urban sites, primarily in North

America. While the articles in the text are varied, together they highlight several

trends in the archaeology of overseas Chinese communities. Many of the presented

chapters represent attempts to build generalizable models linking archaeological

assemblages found at overseas Chinese sites with ethnic or racial identity. Sando and

Felton (1993: 151-176) published a particularly influential paper in this volume

wherein they translated store ledgers from a Chinese merchant’s store in rural

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California and determined the relative value of various ceramic vessel forms. The

book ended with a summary of overseas Chinese archaeology from Roberta

Greenwood who outlined the history of overseas Chinese archaeology in the United

States, explaining how the discipline has transitioned from one primarily concerned

with typology and classification, to a discipline concerned with broader theoretical

questions. She explains how in early projects “theoretical constructs were rare” (1993:

377) but that in the 1980s, more scholars began focusing on questions of culture

change. She warns against ethnocentric interpretations of archaeological assemblages,

the focus in reporting on “glamorous, or recognized artifacts” (Greenwood 1993: 378),

and the disarticulation of local history from archaeological interpretation. Her review

is also notable, along with the article by Wegars (1993a) in the same volume, for

highlighting the causes and consequences of the gendered character of an overseas

Chinese community that was predominantly men.

Building from this work, archaeologists have convincingly challenged

unidirectional and simple models of acculturation. For example, Lydon’s (1999)

groundbreaking study of the Chinese community in the “Rocks” region of Sidney

firmly challenged the casual use of artifact style or origin as a direct marker for ethnic

identity. Instead, her work focuses on how artifacts were interpolated into multiple

discourses of race and ethnicity (as well as gender, class, etc...). Praetzellis and

Praetzellis (2001) have examined the ways that Chinese produced objects and objects

not made in China were actively used by members of the overseas Chinese community

in order to enact certain social and political agendas, and the have also explained how

these objects were used differentially within the Chinese community. Voss (2005:

59
426) has challenged archaeological interpretations of Chinese communities as

“insular, segregated enclaves in which residents has minimal interactions with non-

Chinese people and cultures” and reflected that, as a result, “there have been almost no

archaeological studies on the ways non-Chinese populations were transformed through

interaction with Chinese immigrants.” Voss suggests that future studies of overseas

Chinese communities move “beyond the acculturation model” (2005: 429) and instead

ask questions “that might shed new light on intra-cultural developments and

intercultural exchanges.” This call has been taken up by archaeologists who are

beginning to formulate novel approaches to the archaeology of the Chinese Overseas.

In 2008 Voss and Williams edited a thematic issue of Historical Archaeology

that, like Hidden Heritage (Wegars 1993a), collected a series of research articles about

overseas Chinese archaeology. These chapters showed a varied range of research

topics and theoretical approaches, locating their studies around such topics as relative

isolation (Fosha and Leatherman 2008; Greenwood and Slawson 2008), gender

(Williams 2008), religion and burial practices (Fosha and Leatherman 2008, Smits

2008, Kraus-Friedberg 2008), and systemic racism (Baxter 2008). Recently

publications that attempt to break away from acculturation studies are increasingly

common and take a variety of theoretical and topical perspectives. Particularly notable

is Ross’s (2009) comparative study of Chinese and Japanese fishing camps in British

Columbia. Ross uses a transnational and comparative framework to discuss interethnic

differences between these two communities in a context mediated by cultural changes

and economic patterns in both British Columbia and Asia. Another innovative study is

Braje and Erlandson’s (2007) analysis of an abalone midden on the Northern Channel

60
Islands that was associated with a Chinese settlement. They compare the abalone

midden generated by the Chinese community with middens generated by Indians

living in the Middle Holocene in order to understand the historical ecology of the

region. They conclude that the Middle Holocene settlement “was much less

specialized than the historic [Chinese] one” (Braje and Erlandson 2007: 483) and,

therefore, “cannot be easily lumped as specialized, short-term, or limited activity

sites” (Braje and Erlandson 2007: 483). Furthermore, they suggest that the active

hunting of sea otters during the 18th century and the Middle Holocene “created

favorable conditions for [abalone] in local waters” (Braje and Erlandson 2007: 483).

Despite these occasional academic publications, most archaeological research

on overseas Chinese communities is still conducted within the regulatory framework.

In the next section I will highlight an example of the kind of report generated by work

in this framework.

CARSON CITY: AN EXAMPLE OF CURRNET CONTRACT ARCHAEOLOGY

A very good example of the high quality reports currently being produced

about Chinese American and Chinese immigrant communities in the field of cultural

resource management (CRM) is the excavation of Carson City’s Chinatown by Kautz

Environmental Consultants. This report presents a detailed history of the Chinese

community at Carson City, emphasizing the social and economic relationships that

occurred within the Chinese community as well as the relationships that were formed

between Chinese and non-Chinese individuals in the city. They provide a distinction

between large cities such as San Francisco that “served historically as entrepots, places

61
where goods, and - in many respects - services, were warehoused or stored for

eventual use or destruction” (Kautz and Risse 2006: 48) and small towns that did not

serve such a role. In their introduction they argue that they seek to understand

(following Voss 2005) “whether the Chinese experience (albeit recognizing those

aspects of social interaction that may have represented racism) was qualitatively

different than that experienced by other nineteenth century, non-English speaking,

immigrants” (Kautz and Risse 2006: 48). Conscious of the many overseas Chinese

projects that have been poorly recorded and curated, they make explicit that the

primary goal of their project, more than any driving theoretical agenda, was “to

document all aspects of the project, and make the data and the project conclusions

available to other interested persons” (Kautz and Risse 2006: 49). The four major

research questions that they do address in the project are formed around the legal

notions of significance that contract archaeology requires and include:

1. Consumer Behavior: “Does the resource enable us to describe

consumer practices along with disposal behavior of a household or business with

reference to specific social, economic, occupational, or ethnic characteristics”

(Kautz and Risse 2006: 51).

2. Urban Geography: “Does the location of this resource inform us

regarding the ‘value’ placed on land during the historic period?” (Kautz and Risse

2006: 51).

3. Interpretative potential: “Does the resource have public interpretive

potential” (Kautz and Risse 2006: 52).

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 4. Trade Networks: “What is the place of Carson City in terms of the

acquisition, distribution, and use of Chinese goods” (Kautz and Risse 2006: 53).

While these questions are addressed in the text, the authors engage with more

substantive theoretical issues in their conclusion when they outline “two opposition

“positions,” of frameworks for social systems: A “generalized Marxian model,

representing a type of conflict model or research bias” (Kautz and Risse 2006: 175)

and a “structural-functionalist” bias (Kautz and Risse 2006: 175). They explain how

“there are many examples of real friendship and a social and economic

interdependence between Chinese and Euroamericans on the western mining frontier.”

(Kautz and Risse 2006: 176). They argue that:

As time went on, and particularly after the turn-of-the-century, reduced

opportunities, legal restrictions such as the Exclusion Act of 1882, and increasing
social and economic circumscription, drove most of the inhabitants of Carson
City’s Chinatown to depart for more urban and urbane communities where larger
populations of Asians and increased economic opportunities provided a more
secure haven (Kautz and Risse 2006: 181).

They then explain how “it must be emphasized that neither the internal nor external

conflicts and dynamics present within the Chinese community in Carson City is easily

extracted archaeologically, from the ground. Rather, the use of archival and map

sources has been an absolute necessity to compliment the excavated data.” (Kautz and

Risse 2006: 183). These conclusions are theoretically rich and point towards the large

body of well conducted contract work, but even a project so exemplary still frames the

63
overseas Chinese in primarily racial terms, treats the relationship between artifact and

identity as a simple and unmediated one, and frames the Chinese American experience

as one that is determined almost exclusively through Chinese/White relations. As I

explain in the next section, engaging critically with the history and theories of Asian

American studies will help archaeologists thicken our understanding of the overseas

Chinese and Chinese American experience and provide us with the theoretical tools to

better interpret our archaeological data.

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Although archaeologists have made great strides in recent years, archaeology

still rarely articulates with the concerns and theoretical problems that have been posed

by Asian American studies scholars. The historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and

literary theorists who have been working in Asian American studies have extensively

engaged with questions of Asian American culture and history. These scholars have

also developed a sophisticated vocabulary for engaging with Asian American identity.

In the next section I will outline the history and major research statements of Asian

American studies, arguing that archaeology, with its attention focused on the

materiality of everyday life and its potential to unravel the materialization of discourse

in contingent locations, can both draw from and actively contribute to debates in this

field of study.

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ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES: INTRODUCTION

This section acts as a brief survey of the history and “prehistory” of Asian

American studies with particular emphasis on scholarship that engages with Chinese

American communities. I begin this section by outlining academic studies of Asian

American communities that were conducted prior to “Asian American movement” and

the formal establishment of Asian American Studies departments. I continue by

discussing the history of Asian American studies, focusing on the social, political, and

academic context that, according to founders of the discipline, necessitated its

establishment. I then explore the development of Asian American studies scholarship

in recent years, highlighting some of the primary research themes and methodologies

that I find useful for archaeological analysis.

This section should not be read as a comprehensive introduction into Asian

American studies or Asian American history. Readers seeking such an introduction

have a wealth of texts available for study. Takaki’s 1989 Strangers from a Different

Shore: A History of Asian Americans provides a canonical, if increasingly outdated,

overview of Asian American history. More theoretically textured overviews include

Chan’s 1991 survey of Asian American history, Asian Americans: An Interpretive

History, Palumbo-Liu’s 1999 text Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial

Frontier, and Hsu’s Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and

Migration between the United States and South China, 1882-1943. A number of

readers and introductory edited volumes are also available, including Wu and Song’s

2000 Asian American Studies: A Reader, Ono’s 2005 Companion to Asian American

65
Studies, and Zhou and Gatewood’s 2007Asian American Studies Reader: A

Multidisciplinary Reader.

In place of a general overview, I use this space to draw out, dwell upon, and

contextualize several themes in Asian American studies that I have found particularly

relevant for understanding the relationships between people and objects and between

discourse and materiality in Monterey during the 19th and 20th centuries. Asian

American studies scholars have long understood the symbolic power of material

culture and the polyvalence of “Asian” and “Asian-looking” objects in America and

this literature contains much to offer archaeologists.

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES BEFORE ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

The struggle to form Asian American studies departments and establish

university-based programs that explicitly attended to the academic, political, and

social concerns of Asian American Students and professors constituted a defining

moment in research about Asian American communities (Wei 1993). The Asian

American studies movement invented a discipline and sparked nuanced and relevant

research about Asian American communities that had been marginalized in previous

studies (Espiritu 1992). Despite the serious and substantive break that these

departments represented, they built from and reacted to previous scholarship from

over a hundred years of research on the topic of Asian immigrants in America that had

been conducted by scholars in a myriad of disciplines with a variety of perspectives.

Research centered on Asian American communities in disciplines such as sociology,

anthropology, and history give later activists and scholars a body of theoretical,

66
methodological, and topical research that they could turn to and react against. For

example, Stewart Culin wrote several studies about the Chinese in America during the

19th century (Culin 1887a, 1887b, 1890, 1891), Furthermore, much of this early

research on Asian American communities influenced and was influenced by popular

understandings of the racial characteristics of Asian Americans. In the context of this

dissertation these texts are read not just as disciplinary canon for understanding

theoretical and methodological genealogies, but also as primary source documents for

understanding the process of “scientific racism” that was powerfully employed to

naturalize difference and justify exclusion (Ngai 2004; Stern 2005).

For the purposes of this section I will be focusing primarily on early research

with Chinese American communities but it is important to remember that many of

these scholars also conducted research with other Asian American ethnic groups who

experienced different processes of racialization in the United States and elsewhere.

The term “Asian American” was itself a strategic deployment by 1960s era activists

and academics, used to emphasize the shared interests and concerns of an ethnically

heterogeneous group of immigrants from countries of origin with often radically

different histories and cultures (Espiritu 1992). Furthermore, the term “Asian

American” flattened the very real and substantive cultural differences between recent

immigrants, the children of first generation immigrants, and individuals whose

ancestors had been American citizens and whose families had been living in the

United States for generations. Before the invention of Asian American studies there

were instead scholars working across several disciplines whose research focused on

“Chinese Americans” or “Japanese Americans” or “Indian Americans.” Although I am

67
discussing each of these disciplines in terms of their influence on Asian American

studies, particularly as they related to questions of material culture, it is also important

to remember that these scholars were influential figures (to varying degrees) in the

development of their own disciplines. Robert Park, for example, is a canonical figure

is sociology and is widely credited as one of the founding scholars of the “Chicago

school.”

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SOCIAL WORK

When surveying the history of their discipline, authors in Asian American

Studies programs often hold sociology departments in the United States as a key

institutional forum where Asian American experiences were discussed and where

research on Asian American communities was carried out in the decades before the

Asian American studies movement, though of course not under the moniker “Asian

American” studies (Hirata 1976; Yu 2001; Palumbo-Liu 1999; Espiritu 2008).

Writing about the work of early sociologists in the context of research into the

history and archaeology of the Point Alones Village presents an interesting paradox.

Normally, when outlining a review of the relevant theoretical academic literature, one

is writing about secondary sources that make empirical or theoretical arguments that

one’s own work is trying to engage with, build from, or argue against. In this

particular case, the rise of academic sociology in the United States as well as many

early academic studies of Chinese American communities coincided with the

existence of the Point Alones Village. While it is always the case that, at least in part,

the object of study is constituted through academic study and the social world that

68
those academics move through (Latour 1988), the situation that I am facing goes a step

further: The community that I am studying was explicitly interpolated into debates and

discussions about race and national identity that were predicated upon and made

explicit citations to formal academic theories.

The historical record makes it very clear that at least some non-Chinese

individuals living in the Monterey and Pacific Grove areas were in contact with the

ideas and opinions of academics and missionaries who spoke about China and Chinese

Americans. For example, during the annual Chautauqua lectures at Pacific Grove, held

between 1871 and 1926, speakers regularly gave “scientific” and “historical” lectures

about topics pertaining to China and Asia, and the religious organizations articulated

their “scientific” education with “charity” work among the Chinese (Rieser 2003).

These reformers were often well versed in contemporary “scientific” knowledge about

Chinese and Chinese Americans communities as well as “proper” methods of

acculturation and education, and they often published and spoke about their

experiences.

These connections imply that the emerging social scientific discourse about

Asian and Asian American communities influenced how at least some Pacific Grove

and Monterey residents viewed the Chinese and Chinese Americans living at Point

Alones. In addition to these face-to-face interactions, on a macro-scale, the emerging

social scientific understandings of Chinese and Chinese Americans influenced local,

state, and national policy about topics such as Chinese immigration that had real and

substantive impacts on the daily lives of individuals living in the Point Alones Village.

69
 Considering this deep imbrication of object and subject, my division of this

dissertation into a section concerning primary source material about Chinese and

Chinese Americans and my discussion of the genealogy of Asian American studies in

the United States should be read as an analytic distinction and not a substantive one. In

this section I am not discussing how, for example, early sociological formulations of

race built from and reconstituted exclusionary racial typologies that actually impacted

the day-to-day lives of Point Alones residents (indeed, that is an argument I make in

Chapter 4). Instead, I am discussing a distinct (though related) topic: How did

sociological studies of Asian American communities prefigure the concerns of

scholars who would later form Asian American movements and how did they engage

with material culture?

ROBERT PARK AND THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

Work that was conducted as part of the “Chicago School,” and particularly the

work of Robert Park, is often held to be particularly instrumental in prefiguring the

development of Asian American studies programs in the United States (Palumbo-Liu

1999). Park’s theorizations of ethnicity and focus on assimilation have had lasting

impacts on both Asian American studies (Espiritu 2008) and, though rarely explicitly

mentioned, likely formed much of the basis for assimilationist research programs in

archaeological studies of overseas Chinese communities.

Robert Park’s tenure at the University of Chicago lasted from 1914 to 1936.

While there he worked extensively on topics of immigration and race in North

America. Particularly notable for the formation of Asian American studies programs

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and for research into the lives of Chinese and Chinese Americans is his extensive

work studying Asian immigrant communities. He is one of the few early academic

scholars to take seriously the history and experiences of Asian Americans and attempt

to understand how the political, social, and cultural experiences of these immigrants

shaped broader patterns of American history (Palumbo-Liu 1999).

For example, in his 1950 book Race and Culture, Park dedicates an entire

chapter to the “Racial Frontier” on the Pacific coast of America. As an introduction to

this chapter he writes:

what is taking place around the Pacific is what took place some centuries ago
around the Mediterranean; what took place around the Atlantic. A new
civilization…A new Commonwealth of the Pacific is coming into existence.
For civilization is not, as some writers seem to believe, a biological, but a
social, product. It is an effect of the coming together for trade and for
intercourse of divergent races and cultures (Park 1950: 140).

In this chapter, the role of Chinese and Chinese Americans in developing this “new”

socio-cultural area is made central. Chinese Americans here are not a “menace” to

Western civilization nor are they the antiquated and moribund “Confucian sage” of the

missionaries and Jesuits.

Because of the significance of this article, it is worth discussing at length. Park

begins by arguing that race relations are “primarily geographic.” He posits that fear of

Asian immigration on the Pacific Coast stems from a biologically innate desire for

racial survival. As he explains, at the “back of every other objection and prejudice of

the people of the Pacific Coast to oriental immigration is the desire to survive. They

71
see the older New England stocks being replaced by French Canadians and Slavs; they

do not want to see the Native Sons of the Pacific replaced by Asiatics” (Park 1950:

140). Instead of linking the Anglo Saxon “race” to civilization and modern culture as

many opponents of Chinese immigration did, Park holds spatially segregated “racial”

categories in general as distinct and oppositional to “civilization” which is “a product

of contact and communication.”

The logical result of positing “race” and “civilization” as fundamentally

incompatible categories is that, he argues, “in the long run it is difficult if not

impossible to maintain, in America or elsewhere, racial frontiers. All the deeper

currents of modern life run counter to a policy of racial or national isolation” (Park

1950: 141). The increasing interconnectedness of global capitalism, a condition that

Park describes as allowing “a wheat corner in Chicago a few years ago [to cause] a

bread riot in Liverpool” (Park 1950: 142) is what motivates migration and racial

interaction. With arguments that mirror current political rhetoric, Park explained that

“As long as there is work that the immigrant, European or Asiatic, can perform better

and more economically than the native population can or will, exclusion laws will

make migration more of an adventure but will not wholly inhibit it” (Park 1950: 142)

For Park, the social elements of immigration necessarily follow from its

material effects. This is perhaps most starkly stated when he argues:

The competition of goods, which is an effect of foreign trade, tends inevitably

to bring about a competition of persons, which is an effect of immigration.
Finally both the movements of goods and of populations seem to be merely
aspects of a general tendency to redress the economic balance and to restore

72
 the equilibrium between population and food supply, labor and capital, in a
world economy (Park 1950: 143).

ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology in general, and especially anthropological theorizations of race

and racial identity, represents another primary body of theory and method that Asian

American studies scholars built from and reacted against. Much like the work of

sociologists, the work of early American anthropologists existed in a recursive

relationship with the racial, gendered, and political identities of the communities that

they studied (Asad 1973). Through their studies, these early anthropologists created a

“scientific discourse” of race and identity through which Asian American

communities were popularly framed during the 19th century. As with the sociologists,

much of this early anthropological work focused either explicitly or implicitly on the

role of material culture in the constitution of identification of racial, ethnic, or

gendered identities. Although anthropology in European countries developed in

dialogue with anthropology in the United States, the racial and colonial context in

which the discipline developed in those two countries were differentially constituted

(Kuper 1973). These differences between these traditions are many but, for the

purposes of this dissertation, the most significant among them is the tendency in

European countries to analytically separate sociocultural anthropology from

archaeology. In most European contexts, the latter discipline was viewed as more

closely aligned with history. (For a comparative discussion of the development of

national anthropologies see Barth et al. 2005).

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 Even though the Society for American Archaeology was not created until 1935

(Patterson 2001: 65), early research into the kinds of topics that were later claimed by

anthropologists as their specialty has been at the center of political theory in the

United States of America since the founding of the nation. While not directly

anthropological in the sense that they were formulated by professional

anthropologists, these explanations for racial, ethnic, and gendered difference

nevertheless prefigured professional academic anthropology and are used as a sort of

“creation myth” of the discipline (Trigger 1989). For example, the deep imbrication of

anthropological theories of race and political subjectivity is widely noted in the

writings of Thomas Jefferson who extensively discussed Native American identity

(Patterson 1991, Trigger 1989). Thomas Jefferson firmly believed that Native

Americans were not biogenically distinct from European Americans and. He used

archaeological evidence for this argument, pointing to large and elaborate Native

American burial mounds located across the United States and its territories. Contra

prevailing theories for the generation of these mounds, Jefferson argued that they were

indeed built by the ancestors of Native Americans and that the presence of such

monumental architecture and elaborate material culture clearly demonstrates that they

were capable of “civilization.” He even went so far as to excavate a Native American

shell mound to “prove” that Native Americans were capable of “civilization”

(Patterson 2001). Jefferson believed that Native Americans were racially distinct from

Europeans not because of innate biogenic differences but were instead, according to

Patterson (2001: 9) racially distinct as a result of “their environmental circumstances

and the stage they had achieved in the development of civilization.” Jefferson

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contrasted the unity of racial identity between European and Native American men

with that of Africans and African Americans (and women of every race) who, he

argued, were fundamentally different (and inferior) to White and Native men

(Patterson 2001: 10). This “anthropological” argument served a political purpose,

allowing for the rhetorical construction of a new nation that drew from both the

political traditions of Europe but that also grew from the vitality of non-European

indigenous “races.” Material culture, in the form of Native American burial mounds,

was held up as evidence for the advanced nature of indigenous residents of the

Americas and was viewed as proof that “great civilizations” could flourish in North

America.

These “early anthropologists” conducted a kind of “scientific” research that

shares certain practices, intentions, and evidentiary standards as modern anthropology,

but one should not overstate their similarity. This research was usually conducted in a

haphazard fashion and systematic theory and methods were not widely developed,

published, or shared (Trigger 1989).

RACE AND ANTHROPLOGY

Issues of race and national belonging continued to be at the heart of American

anthropology as it was organized into a profession and incorporated into universities.

During the early days of academic anthropology, the cause and consequences of racial

variation were hotly debated and can be characterized as one of, if not the, central

debates in anthropology. Many anthropologists spoke publicly for or against the

immutable link between race, culture, and intelligence.

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 Patterson (2001) has discussed three “distinct conceptions” of anthropology

that developed during and after the First World War. These included:

1. “The one crafted by Franz Boas and his students [who] argued that

culture rather than race determined behavior and stressed the interconnections of

ethnology, linguistics, folklore, archaeology, and physical anthropology”

(Patterson 2001: 55).

2. The one “crafted by Ales Hrdlicka (1869-1943) of the National

Museum, asserted the primacy of the biology and attempted to establish physical

anthropology as an autonomous academic discipline” (Patterson 2001: 55).

3. The one “of Charles B. Davenport (1866-1944) and other spokesmen of

the eugenics movement, who were the direct heirs of late nineteenth-century

Social Darwinism; they saw eugenics as a practical science and viewed all human

differences in terms of heredity and a rank-ordered racial hierarchy with White

Anglo-Saxon Protestants at the top of other groups arranged below them in terms

of decreasing whiteness” (Patterson 2001: 55).

These anthropological debates were not merely academic. For example, in his

1895 presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of

Science, Daniel Brinton, a distinguished anthropologist, argued that “the black, brown

and the red races differ anatomically so much from the white. . . that even with equal

cerebral capacity they never could rival its results by equal efforts” (Patterson 2001:

43). This speech in particular, and anthropological research in general, “provided a

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justification for the Jim Crow legislation and anti-immigration sentiments of the

1890s” (patterson 2001: 43).

Despite the clear and explicit racism that permeated early anthropology, it was

a contested discipline and it has a history more complex than just its role in

rationalizing colonialism and providing paternalistic narratives about “racial others.”

As Baker (1998) has explained, anthropology was actively used by black Americans to

promote political and social equality. As he explains:

During the 1920s anthropology was used for the first time as a tool by Black
people in an effort to shape an ethnic identity, carve out a heritage, and fight
for racial equality. As part of this process Arther A. Schomburg, Alain Locke,
Arthur H. Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Carger G. Woodson, and others turned
to and contributed to the JAFL [Journal of American Folk Lore] (Baker 1998:
148).

These anthropological constructs of race created a serious of discourses that

Asian American studies scholars reacted with and against when the discipline was

forged in the 1960s.

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES AS A DISCRETE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

Although both sociology and anthropology in the United States provided tools

and an (albeit limited) intellectual foundation to discuss and critique regimes of racial

exclusion and analyze the experiences of immigrants to the United States, both

disciplines were primarily practiced by white Americans for a white American

audience. Furthermore, both disciplines had intellectual agendas that were not focused

on the problems and concerns of Asian Americans and they both had a history of

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being used for reactionary ends. For many Asian American studies scholars and Asian

American activists, these disciplines did not provide them with the intellectual or

political tools necessary to analyze and understand the histories, cultures, and political

struggles of their communities.

Asian American Studies as a discrete academic discipline with formal and

organized departments came into being during the late 1960s as a distinct component

of the larger movement towards ethnic and gender studies within the academy. It was

largely built through the dedication and work of “activist-scholars” on college

campuses across the United States (Fujino 2008) and was characterized by the close

articulation of political action and community-focused academic research.

These activist-scholars argued that traditional academic disciplines such as

anthropology, sociology, history, and literature had structural Eurocentric biases that

could not be adequately addressed within the confines of disciplinary practice.

Anthropology, for example, was a discipline that formed in consort with colonialism -

its original purpose, it was argued, was to study the “savage others” who missionaries,

merchants, and the military had encountered during various colonial and imperial

forays across the globe. As a result, anthropological writing had, wittingly or not,

aided agents of colonial domination in their attempts to control or otherwise exploit

the subjects of their research. The discipline of sociology was likewise critiqued as

being increasingly out of touch with the concerns of living peoples. As explained:

“anchored in positivist epistemologies, the disciplinary mainstream of sociology

became increasingly more specialized and correspondingly less engaged with related

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disciplines; its claims to universal and objective knowledge also moved the field away

from an explicit commitment to social activism” (Espiritu 1999: 510)

THE ETHNIC STUDIES MOVEMENT

Thes establishment of Ethnic Studies departments that are created by and for

the individuals whose lives and experiences were to be the topic of study was (and

indeed remains) controversial. As Wang recalls:

When the concept of ‘‘Asian America’’ was first coined in the late 1960s by a
group of California college students of predominantly Chinese, Japanese,
Korean, and Pilipino descent to represent both their newly found collective
identity and shared political aspirations in the United States, the established
Asian communities and the general public were uniformly apprehensive about,
if not outright hostile to, the use of such a politically charged self-designation
and the political agenda advanced by the new movement (Wang 1990: 76)

These programs were founded through often boisterous activism. For example,

the first Asian American studies departments were formed in 1969 in the aftermath of

student strikes and political agitation in 1968, particularly at San Francisco State

University. Wei argues that the Asian American movement was spurred on by youth

who “Having tried to assimilate into mainstream culture, only to be rejected as

‘unassimilable sojourners,’ [….] sought alternatives” (Wei 1993: 45). Campus

activism at San Francisco State University played a particularly strong role in the

formation of Asian American studies departments. During that year students, faculty,

and activists participated in what they called the “Third World Student Strike.”

According to Umemoto (1989) the strike was triggered by the suspension of Black

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Panther Party activist and English professor George Murray. The Black Student

Union, viewing this action and politically and racially motivated, protested and were

soon joined by various other student organizations including the Latin American

Student Organization, the Mexican American Student Confederation, and the

Intercollegiate Chinese-Americans for Social Change among others. The called their

coalition the “Third World Liberation Front” and demanded a college of Ethnic

Studies that would teach students in a supportive and dieverse environment and that

would be more attentive to the social and political needs of these students and the

communities that they came from (Wei 1993). The strike soon spread outside of the

bounds of San Francisco State University. After quite a bit of campus agitation and

conflict the strikers achieved their goal of establishing ethnic studies departments at a

number of universities including UCLA, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State

University, among others. These departments were to be broadly interdisciplinary in

theory and method and focus on the creation of critical social knowledge.

Early work by the scholars who formed Asian American Studies departments

focused on plotting the histories of various Asian American communities and

highlighting the cultural and social experiences and products that Asian Americans

had produced - the literature, movies, art, and culture of Asian America. In this next

section, I will briefly outline this literature and explain its engagements with material

culture.

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“THE SYLLABUS” - CHINESE AMERICAN STUDIES

One notable example of this “early work” in Asian American history is a

collection of articles edited by Thomas Chinn with extensive assistance from Him

Mark Lai, and Philip Choy (Chinn et al. 1969). In an oral history transcript preserved

at the Bancroft Library Chinn explains how the book was published by the Chinese

Historical Society of America, a historical society founded by Chinn and four others in

San Francisco in 1963 and dedicated to uncovering, sharing, and celebrating Chinese

American history. This text has been highly influential in the field of Chinese

American history and, indeed, was used as the “outline” for a San Francisco State

University course that represented the first Chinese American history class in the

United States. The goals of the Chinese Historical Society of America were not

limited to history, however. As Chinn explained in his interview: “this Chinese

Historical Society was able to advance Chinese-American studies into a broader field

from the study of Chinese-American history.” As Chinese American historian Connie

Yu points out, this book “became a reference guide for writers and historians,

launching conferences and inspiring further scholarship” (Yu 2008: 158) It remains a

heavily cited text in Asian American studies and articles from the text continue to be

taught in Chinese American and Asian American history classes around the country.

While the text is of critical importance, its articles focus on descriptive history and

summaries of legislative and political actions. It was not until later that scholars in

Asian American studies expanded the theoretical, topical, and methodological scope

of the discipline.

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FIELDS DEVELOP, DEBATES EMERGE

The journal Amerasia represents one of the first major Asian American studies

academic journals published and it is often heralded as a catalyst for the development

of the discipline. It was first published by the Yale Asian American Student

Association, a group of campus student activists that formed at Yale University in the

late 1960s. The composition of the journal is representative of the scholarly agenda of

the early Asian American studies movement. The journal had a distinguished group of

scholars on their board of advisors, including Alan Nishio, the associate director of

Asian American Studies at UCLA, Chitoshi Yanaga, Yale professor of political

sciences, and Francis Hsu, an anthropologist. The journal was funded by a list of

donors from Hawaii, California, and New York and included institutional funders such

as the Seridan Corporation, the Liberty Bank of Hawaii, and the Norman Lou Kee

foundation. The journal was published by Don Nakanishi, then a young professor at

UCLA. In years since, the journal has continued to be published by the UCLA Asian

American Studies Center and it has become a leading journal in the field of Asian

American studies.

The first volume of the journal continued a mixture of articles from different

perspectives: academic articles were published alongside poetry, interviews with

notable Asian American scholars, and book reviews. By mixing the artistic with the

academic and the political, the journal made real the rhetoric of blending scholarship

with art and activism that was at the heat of the Asian American movement.

Particularly interesting in the third issue of first volume (1971) is an interview

conducted with S. I. Hayakawa. Hayakawa was a Canadian-American of Japanese

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descent and served as the president of San Francisco State University and later won

election to the U.S. Senate. Hayakawa’s rise to popularity coincides with actions he

took as appointed president of San Francisco State University. While there, he took a

hard line against the student strikes. Indeed, his first act as president was to shut down

the campus. He continued to chart a path firmly opposed to the demands of striking

students and teachers, and located himself firmly in the establishment by, for example,

making inflammatory statements about the campus activists being “hopped up on

drugs” (Rosenfeld 1970: 19) and “cowards” (Rosenfeld 1970: 20). That the editors of

Amerasia would include an interview with a man so hostile to the formation of Asian

American studies speaks to their commitment to explore the Asian American

experience in all of its facets.

STRANGERS FROM A DIFFERENT SHORE

Ronald Takaki’s (1989) text Strangers From a Different Shore was an

instrumental book in the development of Asian American studies and played a large

role in bringing many of the concerns and topics explored in Asian American studies

to a wider audience. As Wang writes: “the book neatly recapitulates familiar themes

and concepts in Asian American studies, as in a coda, under a main theme, ‘strangers

from a different shore’” (Wang 1990: 89). Takaki called upon on scholars to “re-

vision” American history by taking into account the experiences of Asian Americans

and by recognizing and understanding the impact on American history and culture of

successive migrations of Asian immigrants. The book engages with a wide variety of

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primary and secondary sources from both Chinese and non-Chinese authors including

poetry, fiction, newspaper accounts, and legislative records.

While the book provides a strong and accessible overview of Asian American

history, and engendered for many future studies, the text has been critiqued by some.

Kim (1990: 105), for example, suggests that his selective use of decontextualized

snippets of fiction and poetry written by Asian Americans essentializes the Asian

author, making him or her stand for “a culture” instead of “a subject.” This move, she

argues, flattens heterogeneity, and rests upon “the East/West, push/pull, Asian/Euro-

American paradigmatic binarisms” that she believes should be challenged by engaged

scholarship. In particular, Kim finds that the homogenization of the Asian American

experience allows no space to establish (Asian American) women’s “centrality and

selfhood on their own terms” (Kim 1990: 106). Ultimately, she argues, “by

constructing binary opposition between history and literature, fact and fiction, truth

and imagination, men and women, canonized Anglo writers and marginalized Asian

American writers, Strangers from a Different Shore flattens the voices that it purports

to liberate” (Kim 1990: 109). This is a critique echoed by Chan (1990a) who

challenges Takaki’s use of primary and secondary sources as tending towards

decontextualized essentialism. As she writes, “evidence, need to be either analyzed

and evaluated in a manner consistent with their genres or, as current academic fashion

recommends, ‘interrogated’ in order to reveal the ‘positionality’ of those who

generated them and ‘deconstructed’ to unveil the nature of the discourses based on

them. No such appraisal is offered in Strangers” (Chan 1990a: 85). Wang has likewise

argued that the book covers very little new ground within Asian American studies and

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is primarily “enlightening for the uninformed public and it is also a useful introduction

for those interested in Asian American studies” (Wang 1990: 90)

Although Takaki’s book might have brought some of the fundamental

concerns of Asian American studies into other academic departments, it did not

engender the kind of sustained engagement between archaeology and Asian American

studies that Voss and Allen (2008) have recently called for. The Asian American

studies texts that are usually cited in archaeological research are usually the

“canonical” surveys of history (e.g. Daniels 1990; Takaki 1989; Chan 1991b) or texts

pertaining to local history. Concerns and debates within Asian American studies are

rarely attended to and the sophisticated theoretical and methodological tools that have

been developed by Asian American studies scholars over the last twenty years are

rarely employed. In the next section I will detail several key developments in Asian

American studies that I find particularly productive for archaeology.

THEMES IN ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Scholars working in Asian American studies today occupy a panoply of

disciplinary positions. In addition to the groundbreaking work being conducted in

Asian American Studies departments, important contributions to the field have been

made by individuals trained by or working in sociology, history, literature,

anthropology, and psychology departments, among others. This wide and

heterogeneous field of scholarship has produced a range of theoretical and

methodological innovations. These innovations can certainly inform archaeology, a

field where the history and culture of Asian Americans (which, in archaeology, almost

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always means Chinese Americans) has remained at the periphery of theorizing. In

turn, archaeology’s explicit focus on materiality in locally situated contexts can

contribute productively to debates in Asian American studies about the role of objects

and aesthetics in the objectification of powerful discourses. While the literature in

Asian American studies is voluminous, and debates within the field are varied and

wide ranging, I find four major insights to be particularly important for archaeologists

studying Chinese diasporic communities:

1. ASIAN AMERICANS WERE (AND STILL ARE) HETEROGENEOUS

As Yanagisako wrote, “‘Asian American’ poses the conundrum of how a

category of people whose only common experience is that of having been labeled

“Oriental” in an “Occidental” nation can forge for themselves a politically

empowering ethnic identity” (Yanagisako 1995: 275). Although Asian Americans may

share an identity though having faced similar processes of racialization and by

articulating a common and situated social and political struggle (Espiritu 1992), there

are large social cleavages both between social groups (for example, between Chinese

and Korean individuals), as well as within social groups (for example, within the

Chinese American community). Asian American studies scholars have long attended

to the social and political implications of these intra- and inter-ethnic differences and

the implications of flattening or glossing-over these differences. Differences have been

explored along and across many axes including gender (Chan 1991b, Espiritu 2001,

Kang 2002), religion (Woo 1991), time spent in the United States (Kibra 1997),

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sexuality (Wong and Santa Anna 1999, Eng 2002), class (Ong 1996) and geography

(Okihiro 1988) among others.

A central tenant of this commitment to exploring the implications of difference

is that Asian American studies should account for the situational causes and

consequences of flatting difference and homogenizing historical identity. For example

Spickard explains how “when I took the first Asian American studies class at the

Universty of Washington in 1970, ‘Asian American’ meant primarily Japanese and

Chinese Americans, with a few Filipinos allowed a place on the margin” (Spickard

1997: 1). Okihiro also engages with this topic when he writes that “the dominant

figures of Asian American history are Chinese and Japanese immigrants, heterosexual

men who labored in California from the mid-nineteenth century” (Okihiro 1994: xiv).

But an explicit attempt to understand how these normative categories are made, how

these discourses come to be established, and whose experiences or voices are

marginalized or excluded through this process has been at the center of recent

theorizations and debates in Asian American studies (see, for example, Yanagisako

1995). These scholars have attempted to “destabilize some of the standard

assumptions and categories within Asian American studies, including the sites of time

and place, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality” (Okihiro 1994: ix). Lowe sums up

this heterogeneity when she writes:

Asian American discussions of ethnicity are far from uniform and consistent;
rather, these discussions contain a wide spectrum of articulations that includes,
at one end, the desire for an identity represented by a fixed profile of ethnic
traits, and at another, challenges to the very notions of identity and singularity

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 which elaborate ethnicity as a fluctuating composition of differences,
intersections, and incommensurabilities. (Lowe 1991: 27)

Archaeologists studying Chinese American and overseas Chinese communities

have tended to flatten difference within the Chinese community and speak of the

Chinese community as if it were a homogonous whole (Voss 2005, but for some

exceptions see Lydon 1999: Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001; Greenwood and Slawson

2008). Voss (2008c) has suggested that an archaeological focus on “households” has

lead archaeologists astray in this respect. Overseas Chinese communities made

common use of communal trash pits and formed social arrangements that often did not

mirror the definition of “households” presumed by archaeologists. As a result,

maintaining a focus on traditional “households” in this context causes archaeologists

to over-identify homogeneity and under-identify social difference. Archaeologists

would be well served to take a cue from Asian American studies by taking seriously

the differences within and between Asian American communities and by being willing

to interrogate the coherence and contingency of the social categories we presume to

study.

2. IMAGES, FICTION, AESTHETICS, AND NARRATIVE MATTER

A second insight that I draw from Asian American studies is to take seriously

the role of fiction, literature, and visual media in both recording history and, perhaps

more importantly, in constituting history. When Eng (2001) analyzes a fictional play

about Chinese American life or when Lee (2001) discusses the connections between

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Arnold Genthe’s 19th century photographs of the San Francisco Chinatown and Yun

Gee’s work as a member of the San Francisco based Chinese Revolutionary Artists’

Club, they are not simply using that literature or fiction as “another line of evidence”

that provides us with a window through which to glance at preexisting social

arrangements. Instead, they make clear that these images and texts were constituent

components in the creation and articulation of Asian American identities. With this in

mind, many Asian American studies scholars do not locate the formation of Asian

American cultures wholly in the “legal” or the “political” realm. They also place it in

the realm of fiction and aesthetic. For example, Lowe makes this point quite forcefully

where she argues that Culture in the sense of “collectively forged images, histories,

and narratives” (Lowe 1998:7):

Is the medium of the present -- the imagined equivalences and identifications

through which the individual invents lived relationship with the national
collective. But it is simultaneously the site that mediates the past, through
which history is grasped as difference, as fragments, shocks, and flashes of
disjunction. It is through culture that the subject becomes, acts, and speaks
itself as "American." It is likewise in culture that individuals and collectivities
struggle and remember, and in that difficult remembering, imagine and
practice both subject and community differently (Lowe 1996: 2)

When Kim critiqued Takaki’s use of narrative and fiction in Strangers from a

Different Shore it was not because he used fiction in a history text. Instead, it was

because the texts he used “are taken literally for use as illustrations of ‘history,’ and

the multiple identities of the writers as both determined and determining are denied”

(Kim 1990: 109) Narratives, writes Kim, “are not factual accounts; in them, cultural

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scripts are being adhered to or rebelled against” (Kim 1990: 109). This is true for both

media created by Asian Americans about themselves and for media created by non-

Asian Americans about Asian Americans. Indeed, the visual and the optical assay of

bodies and things was a significant component in the racializaiton of Asian bodies and

Asian American subjects. This visual assay is so striking that Kim proposes “Asian

Americans and other people of color have never been more than mere props and

objects, not members of the cast and thus cannot be tacked on” (Kim 1990: 112)

Archaeologists studying the overseas Chinese tend to “read past” historical

documents in order to “get at” archaeological conclusions. For example, the

photographs in Fee (1994: 88) are not analyzed as historical artifacts that framed

subjects (Chinese bodies) in certain ways and established and perpetuated historically

powerful discourses as they circulated as media. Instead, they are used to illustrate

functional uses of artifacts that were found and illustrate historical characters being

discussed. Following the lead of Asian American studies scholars, I give serious

consideration to how fiction, media, and aesthetics circulated about and around the

Point Alones Village, and how this circulation structured, and was in turn structured

by, local events and processes.

3. ASIAN AMERICANS ARE RACIALIZED THROUGH AND AGAINST AN

ORIENTALIST LENS THAT IS DEEPLY INTERTWINED WITH DISCOURSES

OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY

A third area of Asian American studies from which I draw theoretical and

methodological nourishment is the work of Asian American studies scholars who trace

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the contours of orientalism as it unfolded in relation to Asian American identities. In

brief, the concept of orientalism was used by Said (1979), most notably in a book of

the same name, to describe a series of historically situated discourses through which

individual and social actors in “the West” understand and compare themselves to an

“imaginative geography” called variously “the East,” “the Orient,” or “Asia.” This

imaginative geography is mapped onto real places and was used to justify and control

the contours of colonial expansion. As Said himself explains:

Orientalism of course refers to several overlapping domains: firstly, the

changing historical and cultural relationship between Europe and Asia, a relationship
with a 4000 year old history; secondly, the scientific discipline in the West according
to which beginning in the early 19th century one specialized in the study of various
Oriental cultures and traditions; and, thirdly, the ideological suppositions, images, and
fantasies about a currently important and politically urgent region of the world called
the Orient (Said 1985: 89).

Asian American studies scholars have explored how “Although [Said’s] concept refers

specifically to French and British discourse on the Middle East, it is also applicable to

American (and western European) discourse on the Far East - the region that

Americans today are most likely to identify as the “‘Orient’” (Yanagisako 1995: 286).

Yanagisako outlines some of the contours of this orientalist imagination of the: “Far

East” when she writes:

Like French and British discourses, the American one defined the essential
characters of East and West in terms that justified the political and cultural
hegemony of the West. Whereas the East was portrayed as mired in
traditionalism, the West moved boldly ahead in its modernism; where the East
respected the authority of fathers and emperors, the West lauded the

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 independence of sons and rational individuals, thus facilitating both the
technological inventiveness and the democratic justice of advanced, western
industrial society. Finally, whereas the East languished in an unmistakably
feminine passivity, the West struck a decisively masculine pose (Yanagisako
1995: 286).

The manner in which orientalism bundles together racial, national, sexual, and

gendered identities has been explored by Asian American studies scholars who have

demonstrated that “the feminization of Asia was well under way before the

colonization of Asia by Europe in the sixteenth century, as evident in the sixteenth

century” (Okihiro 1994: 11). These scholars have explored how orientalism flows

through the depictions of Asian Americans in popular culture and in legal and political

rhetoric. They also attend to the ways that orietnalism changes over time and what

Leong explains as “the ways in which “orientalized subjects” engage orientalism”

(Leong 2005: 6)

Archaeologists rarely engage explicitly with the historical and interpretative

problems posed by orientalism (Voss and Allen 2008). The uncritical persistence of

this orientalism is what allows there to be an eerie concordance between the

statements of Benjamin Franklin who blamed the arcane character of Chinese writing

on the “obstinate Adherence of the People to old Customs” (Dragon and Eagle 1993:

86) and the common process thorough which archaeologists “emphasize boundedness,

insularity, and tradition in their interpretations of overseas Chinese communities”

(Voss 2005: 426). Taking oreintalism seriously allows us to better understand the form

and content of interactions between the Chinese and non-Chinese in the United States.

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It asks that we attend to the gendered implications of the social formations we study,

and it asks that we critically analyze our own subject position as scholars and the ways

that orientalism may be mediating our accounts of history and culture.

4. THE ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE WAS (AND IS) A TRANSNATIONAL

PHENOMENON. IT IS AT ONCE BOTH LOCAL AND GLOBAL

In order to understand the complex process of migration, identity formation,

and national identity, scholars working in Asian American studies have stressed the

transnational character of Chinese migration. Attending to this transnationality means

understanding that subjects are not simply constituted within a national polity (either

as a “citizen” or an “other”). Instead, subjects are constituted though movements

between nations, through global connections, and through social and economic

processes at varying local, national, and supra-national scales. It is important to

distinguish a transnational focus that attends to the complex interpolation of subjects

into varying scales of discourse (both national and transnational) with a

“transnationalism” that suggests that individuals are free to invent themselves without

reference to local and global structures of power. Asian American studies scholars

consistently understand identities and social collectives forged in transnational

contexts to be the former, not the latter (Ong 1996). A critical insight gained from a

transnational focus for those studying the Chinese diaspora is a challenge to the

orientalist idea that China in the 19th century was a static geography and that Chinese

immigrants “moved into” modernity when they came to the United States. A more

textured and accurate account of Chinese American history can be established by

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accounting for the social and political changes that were taking place in China during

this time period and by chronicling the enduring links between Chinese immigrants

and Chinese Americans living in the United States and people, events, and economies

in China (Hsu 2000; Lai 2010).

The benefits of understanding the transnational character of the Asian

American experience are not limited to studies of Asian American communities.

Indeed, Palumbo-Liu suggests that attending to this history will help scholars to

understand how “America” is continually made and remade through transnational

processes. As he writes:

Modern Asian America should be read within a context of multiple

subjectivities can be depathologized through a close a critical reading of Asian,
American, and Asian/American history, and that the unity presumed to be
enjoyed by “America” is in fact better read as a set of adjustments and
reformations that disclose the fact that America is always in process itself. And
a large part of this process in the twentieth century has particularly involved
Asian America (Palumbo-Liu 1999: 389).

Archaeologists studying overseas Chinese communities have long framed their

research questions through the lens of assimilation studies (Voss 2005; Voss and Allen

2008). These studies assume that Chinese individuals entered the United States from a

culturally (if not politically) stable and coherent society. The “culture” that the

Chinese immigrants brought with them was either whittled away through their

interaction with “American” culture or it was retained (it is usually suggested that

retention was either due to cultural conservatism or exclusionary racism). Work on

transnationalism by Asian American studies scholars firmly challenges these

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assumptions. While some archaeologists have adopted this perspective (Lydon 1999;

Ross 2009) a more sustained engagement with the implications of transnationalism is

necessary. An archaeology of overseas Chinese communities informed by a

transnational perspective will take into account the many and complex connections

between China and the United States - connections that ran through many circuits and

often bled through national geographies. It will also challenge the assumption that

either China or the United States were stable, coherent, pre-discursive entities.

CONCLUSION

I have provided a very brief and necessarily truncated overview of Asian

American studies literature. In this summary I have undoubtedly flattened substantial

theoretical and methodological differences between the scholars whose work I cite. I

have paid particularly close attention to work that challenges conventional practices in

overseas Chinese archaeology and work that, explicitly or implicitly, engages with

material culture and its role in constituting certain ‘kinds’ of bodies, people, and

things. This dissertation seeks to build upon this scholarship by taking an explicit look

at those material encounters by unraveling how the structures and discourses that are

highlighted in much of this literature played themselves out in one particular place at

one particular time. In the next chapter I turn to the Point Alones Chinese Village

where I explore how a diverse series of materializations played out in one particular

situated time and place.

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 CHAPTER 3: ORIENTING MONTEREY

INTRODUCTION

The previous chapters explored the intellectual context of my work. They

explained how scholars working in multiple fields have theorized complex

relationships between identity and objects. I argued that archaeologists studying the

overseas Chinese will gain from a sustained and thorough engagement with the

theories and methodologies of Asian American studies and, in return, use our unique

methods and research programs contribute to ongoing debates across disciplinary

boundaries. Specifically, archaeology is poised to speak about the past and about past

relations between people and things in a manner that simultaneously attends to both

the local and the global. In this chapter I introduce those “locals” and “globals” upon

which my analysis of material culture rests and I argue for an archaeology where the

objects uncovered during excavation are understood of as “sites of articulation”

(Laclau and Mouffe 1985). I lead by providing a brief history of the Point Alones

Chinese Village in Monterey, CA, situating the site in its immediate historical context.

I then explore the central role of material objects in the creation and iteration of 19th

century North American imaginations of Chinese and Chinese American identities.

Finally, I argue that the Point Alones Village was not the “bit of the Orient picked up

and brought thither on a magic carpet” (MacFarland 1915: 76) that was imagined by

some early historians, non-Chinese neighbors, and visitors to Monterey. Instead, the

village existed as a constituent part of social, cultural, political, and economic life in

Monterey. Understanding the development of this local socio cultural milieu is critical

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for understanding the excavated archaeological assemblage and social formations at

the Point Alones Village.

ORIENTING MONTEREY

This section briefly introduces the history of the Monterey Peninsula, with a

specific focus on the Point Alones Village. Instead of presenting a broad historical

study of the Point Alones Village, a task that could occupy the careers of several

historians, I provide an orientation, exploring how the Monterey Peninsula came to be

the ‘out of the way’ place where Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans built

their village at Point Alones.

Monterey is the name of a city and a peninsula located on the Central

California coast [see Figures 3.1 and 3.2]. It is about 100 miles south of San Francisco

and 300 miles north of Los Angeles. Over time, the once geographically distinct towns

of Monterey and Pacific Grove have grown to abut each other, though they remain

distinct municipalities. A third village that figures predominantly in the history of the

Peninsula, Carmel-by-the-Sea (henceforth Carmel), stands about five miles to the

south [see Figure 3.3 for a historical map of the region that highlights these various

locations].

The towns that make up the Monterey Peninsula are acutely aware of their own

historical significance and they regularly attempt to capitalize on material reminders of

this history (both through buildings, objects, and landscapes that are “authentically”

historical and through those of a more recent vintage). Monterey was the first capital

of Spanish-colonial California and many buildings from this period remain. In

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downtown (called “Old Monterey” by locals) these relics of the Spanish-colonial past

merge almost seamlessly with Mission revival architecture. About a mile away lies

“New Monterey.” This area served as the set and setting for Steinbeck’s (1945)

Cannery Row. Material reminders that point to that book abound. One can walk down

the street and pass the site of Doc Rickett’s lab where one can look at the old canneries

(converted into hotels and shopping emporiums). The Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of

the largest aquariums in the world, anchors this world of literary nostalgia.

The other cities on the Monterey Peninsula also weave their historic identity

into the social, architectural, and economic fabric of the city. Carmel is aesthetically

organized around its mission past and long-standing reputation as an upscale artist’s

haven. The architecture and aesthetic of downtown Carmel is an agglomeration of

styles drawn from these histories. Pacific Grove is next to the “historic” Pebble Beach

golf links and during my excavation at the site of the Point Alones Chinese fishing

village, I was repeatedly told by residents that the city was home to the “most

Victorian houses per-capita in the United States,” a claim that seems believable but

that I’ve never been able to substantiate. Of course, like most historical interpretations

that result from boosterism, these “public histories” paint a picture of the past that is

more akin to what Handler and Gable (1997) have called “good vibes” history than is

the account that a historian would provide. Indeed, the few critical interpretations that

are present in museums and public walkways in Monterey tend towards progressive

narratives of environmental and social decline that are intended to foster a

conservation ethic (this is the primary theme of history in the Monterey Bay

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Aquarium). Of course, the real history of the Monterey Peninsula is more complex

than the simple story that is often offered to tourists.

MONTEREY BEFORE COLONIALISM

The Monterey Peninsula was a multicultural and poly-lingual area long before

the Portola expedition brought Spanish colonists and settlers to the region and before

the first major colonial settlements in the area, Mission Carmel and the Monterey

Presidio, were established. At the time of Spanish colonization the lands surrounding

the Monterey Peninsula were home to Native Americans from at least two different

linguistic groups: “Costanoan” (Ohlone) and “Esselen.” Like with many Native

Californian groups, the division of Monterey Peninsula Indians into linguistically-

bounded groups is largely a reflection of colonial recording processes. The term

“Costanoan,” for example, is a colonial construction drawn from nomenclature used

during Gaspar de Portola’s expedition of 1769. During that expedition the Indian

peoples of the were referred to as “costanos” which, roughly translated, means “people

of the coast” (Levy 1978). This term was later used by anthropologists and

government administrators during the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were

tasked with typologizing Native American communities into discrete “tribes” that

could be fit into the rubric of national governance. Hodge provides an example of this

early ethnological work when he writes:

The territory of the Coastanoan family extended from the Pacific ocean to San
Joaquin r., and from the Golden Gate and Suisun bay on the N. to Pt. Sur on
the coast and a point a shirt distance s. of Soledad in the Salinas valley on the
s. farther inland the s. boundary is uncertain, though it was probably near Big

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 Panoche cr. The Costanoan Indians lived mainly on vegetal products,
especially acorns and seeds, though they also obtained fish and mussels, and
captured deer and smaller game. Their clothing was scant, the men going
naked. Their houses were tule or grass huts, their boats balsas or rafts of tules.
They made baskets, but no pottery, and appear to have been as primitive as
most of the tribes of California. They burned their dead. The Rumsen of
Monterey looked upon the eagle, the humming bird, and the coyote as the
original inhabitants of the world, and they venerated the redwood[….] The
surviving individuals of Costanoan blood may number to-day 25 or 30, most of
them “Mexican” in life and manners rather than Indian...True tribes did not
exist in Costanoan territory, the groups mentioned below being small and
probably little more than village communities, without political connection or
even a name other than that of the locality they inhabited (Hodge 1907: 351).

This typological process and the conflation of linguistic groups with cultural

groups has had significant impacts for scholars. As Hylkma warns:

There is a tendency for scholars and the public to view the San Francisco and
Monterey Bay region as a homogeneous ethnographic unit, encapsulated under
the nomenclature of Costanoan or Ohlone. Both the archaeological record and
ethnohistoric data point to a greater complexity of socio-political interaction,
as diverse as the range of environments that supported the fifty or so
autonomous tribelets known to exist at the time of European contact.
Consequently, broad brush approaches towards describing the native people in
this area can lead to misconceptions about the nature of intergroup
relationships (for example, the coastal people maintained a much different
economy and vocabulary than the interior folks) (Hylkma 1998: 133)

But more important than the effects of early research for later archaeological

and anthropological scholarship has been how the flattening and erasure of differences

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within and between Ohlone peoples in these early anthropological accounts has

impacted the ability of Native Californian peoples to gain federal recognition and

legally substantiate their indigenous heritage. The description of these groups in

Hodge’s (1907) influential Handbook is particularly significant because it states quite

plainly that, according to the purportedly encyclopedic and authoritative

anthropological “knowledge” of the day, the surviving Costanoan/Ohlone peoples

never constituted “true” Indian tribes, that only a handful of individuals from this

entire linguistic area survived Spanish-colonial occupation, that they were a decidedly

“primitive” group of people, and that those few individuals who did survive were

essentially “Mexican” instead of ‘Native.”

Lightfoot (2005) has outlined how a similar process of cultural denial and

dispossession affected many of the Native American groups whose ancestral

homelands were located in areas that the Spanish colonized. These anthropological

accounts allowed the Federal government to declare that these Native American

groups were essentially “extinct” and that there was no need to incorporate or

acknowledge these groups as “authentic” Native American tribes. This sentiment was

widespread among scholars. For example, in a paper outlining the linguistic-based

formulation of the Esselen peoples, Henshaw wrote, “it is a melancholy fact that in

middle California the Indians have almost wholly disappeared” (Henshaw 1890: 47).

Evidence that local Native Americans did not simply “disappear” after

colonialism is copious in the historical record. For example, Native Americans from

farther inland, referred to by Californios as “Tulare Indians” would often raid the

Mexican ranches in the Monterey area (Broadbent 1974). In 1840 the Governor of

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Alta California, Juan Bautista Alvarado, wrote that “the desire to prevent in some way

the continuous robberies which are made in the countryside by the wild Indians and

other evildoers in the 1st district of this Department, causing the ruin of the proprietors

of ranches, and menacing the lives of the defenseless families…” (Broadbent 1974:

90). Native American laborers were also important contributors to the hide and lumber

trade that was developing in Spanish and later Mexican colonial California (Burgess

1962).

SPANISH COLONIAL CALIFORNIA

The expansion of European colonial powers along the Pacific Rim and into

California may have impacted the Native inhabitants of Monterey before the Spanish

physically arrived. In other areas of California, the transmission of disease likely

predated face-to-face contact (Erlandson et al. 2001; Hull 2009). When Spanish

colonists did arrive, they came motivated by a complex set of personal, economic, and

geopolitical desires. The first probing of the Monterey Peninsula by Spanish colonists

occurred during the expedition of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. Members of this

expedition sailed from Mexico in 1542 on an exploratory voyage. Upon first viewing

Monterey he noted in his diary that at “37[degree] latitude he came upon a little

endsenda (bay), the shores of which were covered in pine” (MacFarland 1914: 7).

These expeditions also heralded the beginning of direct contacts between Native

Californians and European colonists that were to dramatically change life on the

Monterey Peninsula (Erlandson and Bartoy 1995).

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 No further expeditions were launched or settlement attempts made by Spanish

colonists until over fifty years later when Sabastian Vizcaino sailed up the coast of

California searching for sheltered harbors for resupplying ships on trans-Pacific

voyages in an expedition funded by the Spanish viceroy of Mexico City, the Vicomte

de Monterey (Wagner 1929). Vizcaino sailed from Aucapulco in 1602 and traveled

North up the California coast. He mapped the California coast on his voyage and,

upon reaching Monterey, landed his ship, erected a large cross, and declared that “this

would be the best refitting station for Philippine ships” (Walton 2001: 19). In his own

words he was effusive with praise about the potential future for the port of Monterey,

writing in a letter to the king of Spain:

As to what this harbor of Monterey is, in addition to being so well situated in

point of latitude for that which His Majesty intends to do for the protection and
security of ships coming from the Philippines: in it may be repaired the
damages which they may have sustained, for there is a great extent of pine
forest from which to obtain masts and yards, even though the vessel be of a
thousand tons burthen, live oaks and white oaks for ship-building, and this
close to the seaside in great number. And the harbor is very secure against all
winds. The land is thickly peopled by Indians and is very fertile in its climate
and the quality of the soil resembling Castile, and any seed sown there will
give fruit, and there are extensive lands fit for pasturage, and many kinds of
animals and birds - as is set forth in the report referred to... (Historical Society
of Southern California 1891: 67)

It is perhaps ironic that concern over the “China trade” was a primary factor in

the Spanish-colonial settlement of Monterey. As Reyes writes: “the settlement of Alta

California was meant to serve a strategic role, as the impetus for furthering exploration

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and, ultimately, colonization of the region was to secure Pacific ports, facilitate the

quickest route to the East, and settle the region in order to lay legitimate claim to those

lands” (Reyes 2009: 54). He continues by explaining how “In theory, this claim

would prevent other European incursion into the region and, thus, prevent competition

in, if not foreign monopoly of, trade with the Orient” (Reyes 2009: 54). Monterey

became a permanently settled outpost, and soon the capital, of the Spanish Colonial

presence in 1770 following expeditions of Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan priest,

and Gasper De Portola, a Spanish Solider.

SPANISH AND MEXICAN MONTEREY

During the Spanish occupation of Monterey, the city was home to a

multicultural group of individuals. The Spanish colonists who occupied California

were from a variety of ethnic, national, racial, and social backgrounds (Voss 2008b),

In California, the interactions of these individuals with Indigenous Californians

changed both the colonists and the colonized (Lightfoot 2005). Voss (2008a) has

argued that the experiences faced by Spanish Colonists in California lead to a process

of ethnogenesis, whereby the colonists became “Californios.”

Under the tirpartate system, Spanish colonization proceeded through religious

missions, civilian pueblos, and military/administrative presidios. The Monterey

Peninsula housed all three, the presidio and pueblo were located where the present city

of Monterey (indeed, the Spanish presidio is still used as a military installation by the

United States Army). The mission was located several miles away in Carmel. As the

capital of Alta California, Monterey was a port of call for trading ships, scientific

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expeditions, and the occasional military vessel from a friendly country (Walton 2001).

These ships brought an international group of sailors to Monterey including in 1782

the first listed Chinese (one “Juan Gallardo who was listed as “Chinese-Filipino” but

may not have been Chinese) who stopped in Monterey while aboard the Spanish ship

Princesa (Culleton 1950: 102). The first known Chinese resident of Monterey, a man

listed as “Ah Nam” arrived in 1815 as the cook for Pablo Vicente de Sola, the last

Spanish Governor of Alta California. He resided in Monterey for two years, until his

death (Culleton 1950: 190).

Although Alta California was peripheral to the conflicts during the war of

Mexican independence, the switch in California from Spanish to Mexican sovereignty

had substantial effects on Monterey. During the Mexican period the population of

Monterey increased rapidly and a Californio elite, nascent during the Spanish colonial

period, attenuated (Walton 2001). Monterey was also a primary port for warehousing

and shipping that developed around the international hide and tallow trade (Ogden

1927). Residents of California had developed such a distinct local political

consciousness that a declaration of partial independence from Mexico was declared by

Monterey elites in the mid 1800s (Walton 2001).

Walton describes the tenor of Monterey during this time period, characterizing

it as a place where:

Its population of one thousand persons was international. Spaniards and South
Americans merged with varied sorts of British and North American
immigrants. The leaders were Californianos with mixed loyalties to their
ancestral Mexico and their own increasingly independent land. In 1846, the
American military commander John Sloat sailed into Monterey with American

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 troops and declared that the city was under American rule. This invasion would
be solidified in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo when California was
officially made part of the United States (Walton 2001: 80).

AMERICAN MONTEREY

The American occupation ushered in major changes to Monterey. For a brief

period of time the city remained the capitol of California, but demographic, political,

and economic changes quickly marginalized Monterey. The 1849 California

Constitutional Convention was held in the city, but the diminishing role of Monterey

in California politics is attested to by the fact that an act of the convention was to

move the capital of California away from Monterey to San Jose. In addition to this

political shift, major changes in land ownership transformed the social geography of

Monterey during this time period. Although many of the Californio elite were able to

maintain their land grants, immigrants began to acquire large tracts of land in and

around Monterey, though both legal and questionable means (Walton 2001). One

landowner in particular, David Jacks, became particularly notorious for purchasing

30,000 acres of land in 1856, including the land that would later become the Point

Alones Village, at auction for $1,002.50 (Fink 1972: 124). Court disputed involving

the validity of the sale lasted until at least 1906 when the United States Supreme Court

ruled in his favor in City of Monterey V. Jacks.

Despite these changes, Monterey did not attract immigrants to nearly the same

degree as towns and cities oriented towards the Gold Rush and “Monterey’s

population remained virtually stationary in the early American years” (Walton 2001:

113). One of the most widely published accounts of Monterey during this time period

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was written by Robert Lewis Stevenson, who briefly lived in the city. He described

Monterey in 1880 as such:

The town, when I was there, was a place of two or three streets, economically
paved with sea-sand, and two or three lanes, which were watercourses in the
rainy season, and were, at all times, rent up by fissures four or five feet deep.
There were no street lights. Short sections of wooden sidewalk only added to
the dangers of the night, for they were often high above the level of the
roadway, and no one could tell where they would be likely to begin or end. The
houses were, for the most part, built of unbaked adobe brick, many of them old
for so new a country, some of very elegant proportions, with low, spacious,
shapely rooms, and walls so thick that the heat of summer never dried them to
the heart (Stevenson 1909: 93).

Although Stevenson calls the town “essentially and wholly Mexican”

(Stevenson 1909: 93) he also notes its multicultural character, albeit with

apprehension, when he writes about, in his words, the “hotch-potch” of races that live

in Monterey. He explains that over the course of his time dining in a local Monterey

restaurant he has “sat down to table day after day, a Frenchman, two Portuguese, and

Italian, a Mexican, and a Scotchman: we had for common visitors and American from

Illinois, a nearly pure blood Indian woman, and a naturalized Chinese; and from time

to time a Switzer and a German come down to country ranches for the night.” He

continues, writing: “no wonder that the Pacific coast is a foreign land to visitors from

the Eastern States, for each race contributes something of its own. Even the despised

Chinese have taught the youth of California, none indeed of their virtues, but the

debasing use of opium (Stevenson 1909: 99).

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 Robert Lewis Stevenson captured an image of Monterey on the cusp of social

and economic changes that accompanied the introduction of the railroad to Monterey.

Although a narrow-gauge railway, largely financed by David Jacks, had been

developed in 1874, it was “beset by financial problems” (Fink 1979: 127). The

development of this railroad did highlight some of the tensions between the Chinese

and their non-Chinese neighbors and newspaper accounts of its construction

commented upon the presence and desirability of Chinese workers. For example, on

June 12th 1874 a reporter with the Monterey Weekly Herald explained:

I understand that the Directors are very reluctant to employ Chinese labor, but
at the same time the road must be finished, and if white men will not come
forward when fair wages are offered them, as a last resort, the Company must
employ Chinamen. I am sorry to say that but few answers to the Company’s
advertisement for white labor have been received, and the next steamer will
bring another invoice of Chinamen (Monterey Weekly Herald).

In 1879 the financially unsuccessful railway was foreclosed upon and sold at auction.

The buyer was the Southern Pacific Railway whose directors envisioned transforming

the area into “the most elegant seaside establishment in the world” (Hemp 2002: 20).

The Southern Pacific Company quickly built a mainline branch to Monterey

from Castroville, a city about 15 miles distant (Fink 1979). Along with the usual rail

service, the railroad ushered in the active development of Monterey as a “resort

destination.” Much of this development was implemented by the Pacific Improvement

company, a land development holding company established by the Huntington,

Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker families (who also owned the Southern Pacific

Railway) in order to skirt legal requirements that were tied to the railway business and

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better manage their assets. Orsi notes that even “Collis P. Huntington chronically

complained that it was impossible to discern where one company left off and the other

began, or which assets controlled by the improvement company belonged to which

family” (Orsi 2005: 115). The Pacific Improvement Company purchased large tracts

of land on the Monterey Peninsula, including, in1880, the land that the Point Alones

Village stood upon. This was part of a larger transaction that encompassed 7,000 acres

in what would later become Pacific Grove (Orsi 2005: 177).

The company proceeded to rapidly develop and subdivide the property. As

Orsi explains: “After building reservoirs and bringing water to the town and spending

hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements, the company advertised, sold lots,

and fostered the community’s development over several decades” (Orsi 2005: 117)

At this point in time, Monterey was still a small city in a sparsely populated

county. McKibben (2006: 14) points out that the population of Monterey in 1880 was

2,583 individuals and that, despite the presence of some racialized minorities (most

notably the Chinese and the Japanese), the town was primarily “a town of native

borns, a place where the descendants of Mexican-Indian-Spanish and Americans lived

in the majority, and where European and Asian immigrants formed a small part of the

population.” In 1900, the town reached a population of 5,355, though the demographic

profile of the area remained largely unchanged (McKibben 2006: 15). The social

world of Monterey changed rapidly with the development of industrial canneries and a

large influx of Italian immigrants. The beginnings of this influx occurred during the

last years of the Point Alones Village and by 1930 “approximately one-third” of

Monterey was “Sicilian in origin (McKibben 2006: 18).

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 The active promotion of the Monterey area as a “tourist destination” by the

Pacific Improvement Company had dramatic effects on the Peninsula. Although the

golf links at Pebble Beach may be the most widely recognized component of this

resort development today, the focal point of the Pacific Improvement Company’s

actions in the late 1800s was the Del Monte Hotel. This large hotel was built in 1880

to house “over 500 guests” (Fink 1979). The Del Monte served as the nexus for a

series of amusements, transformations, and developments that sprung up to cater to the

“thousands of tourists who patronized newly established shops in town” (Fink 1979:

132). The Pacific Improvement Company, along with local interests, funded the

“restoration” of the Carmel mission (Walton 2001: 167) in one of the first iterations of

a broader social, literary, and architectural movement through which, a number of

scholars have argued (McWilliams 1946; Deverell 2005; Kropp 2006), a “highly

romantic conception of the Spanish period began to be cultivated, primarily for the

benefit of the incoming tides of tourists” (McWilliams 1946: 77).

The Pacific Improvement Company advertised the hotel throughout the

country, often incorporating the Spanish colonial past and the Chinese presence into

their depictions of the “allure” of the area. For example, a tourist brochure produced

by the company leads with a Bret Harte poem about Portola, the Spanish-colonial

explorer:

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Portola’s Cross:

Pious Portola, journeying by land,

Reared high a cross upon the heathen strand,

Then far away

Dragged his slow caravan to Monterey.

The mountains whispered to the valleys, “Good!”

The sun, slow sinking in the western flood,

Baptized in blood

The holy standard of the Brotherhood.

The timid fog crept in acrss the sea,

Drew near, embraced it, and streamed far and free,

Saying, “o, ye

Gentiles and Heathen, this is truly He!”

All this the Heathen saw; and when once more

The holy Fathers touched the lovely shore –

Then covered o’er

With shells and gifts the cross their witness bore.

(Whitecomb 1882: 1)

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 The brochure then describe walks that one can take from Monterey: “Half a

mile beyond the town [of Monterey] is an old whaling station that occasionally wins a

leviathan to its trying-pots, and a quarter of a mile further on is a little village of

Chinese fishermen. Near the latter the wreck of a vessel may be seen when the tide is

low – the remains of the ship that took Napoleon Bonaparte off the Island of Elba”

(Whitecomb 1882: 31). The brochure continues: “The gathering of the flotsam and

jetsam of the sea furnishes a distinct employment to the poor Chinamen, Portuguese

and Indians living along the coast. The gorgeous abalone shells are salable for

ornamental purposes, and the beautiful pearly lining is cut up and fashioned into

jewelry” (Whitecomb 1882: 32). In contrast to the poverty of the immigrant groups,

the Hotel Del Monte is described as a bastion of beauty and luxury:

The hotel is first seen through a vista of trees, and in its beautiful
embowerment of foliage and flowers, resembles some rich private home in the
midst of a broad park. The impression is heightened when the broader extent of
avenues, lawns, and flower-bordered walks come into view. The gardener’s art
has turned many acres into a choice conservatory, where the richest flowers
blossom in profusion (Whitecomb 1882: 35).

The hotel also presented “educational” lectures and tours, in one case even

going so far as to attempt and hire a resident archaeologist! In 1906, A.D. Shepard, a

General Manager of the Pacific Improvement Company wrote a letter to H. R. Warner,

the Assistant Manger of the Del Monte wherein he asked about hiring an “archaeology

teacher during the coming winter,” and suggested that the store room of the hotel be

used for exhibits (Shepard to Warner, Pacific Improvement Company Records 1906).

The Del Monte hotel had a number of Chinese workers including “scores of Chinese

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gardeners and kitchen workers” (Walton 2001: 169) and a Chinese foreman who

earned $55 a month in 1915 (Hotel Del Monte Classified Pay Roll, Pacific

Improvement Company Records 1914). The Chinese who worked in these hotels were

not the “docile” workers often implied in historical accounts of the Chinese and they

actively agitated for their rights. For example, in 1889 at another local Pacific

Improvement Company managed hotel, the El Carmelo in Carmel, the Chinese waiters

refused to serve one patron who had made what they viewed as racist remarks by

commenting “upon the character of the immigration pouring into the Golden Gate”

(Walton 2001: 170).

The tourist-driven economy engendered by the hotel Del Monte and the Pacific

Improvement Company was not, of course, the only economic activity in Monterey

during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; fishing and agriculture, for example,

were also quite prevalent, but by the 1890s Monterey was undoubtedly a city that had

been altered by the tourist industry and this industry shaped many of the interactions

between Monterey residents from different backgrounds.

PACIFIC GROVE

The late 1870s were also when the town of Pacific Grove developed. In 1875

David Jacks donated 100 acres of land to establish the Methodist-affiliated “Pacific

Grove Retreat Association.” This land was then “plotted into residential lots, a park, a

grand avenue, minor streets and avenues, and the embryo of a town” (Fink 1979: 167).

By 1879, the town of Pacific Grove served as the West Coast outpost of the

Chautauqua “self-improvement” movement. This movement, founded in New York,

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offered participants a “wide range of adult education programs such as lectures,

presentations, and entertainment targeted at “intellectual as well as spiritual

development” (Canning 2005: 7). Although the Chautauqua season was primarily

active in the summer, Pacific Grove maintained a year-round and steadily growing

population. The Pacific Improvement Company was also instrumental in developing

the town of Pacific Grove, purchasing the property (including the land upon which the

Point Alones Village stood) as part of their aforementioned 1880 land purchase from

David Jacks. The company continued to sell lots and enforce covenant laws that were

designed to reinforce the “Christian” tenor of the community. These regulations

continued to exist long after the Point Alones Village had been destroyed. For

example, in 1916 the “Pacific Grove Retreat Association” entered into an agreement

with the Pacific Improvement Company that stated: “...the financial management and

control of the aforesaid Pacific Grove Retreat shall be in the hands of a Superintendent

of the Grounds appointed by said Pacific Improvement Company, and the moral and

prudential management and control thereof shall be in the hands of the Pacific Grove

Retreat Association." Furthermore, it the “Pacific Grove Retreat Association” had the

Pacific Improvement Company insert the following housing covenant in all sales and

leases within a mile of the grounds of the retreat grounds:

Neither the purchaser nor his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns, nor
any other person or persons occupying said land or premises or any part
thereof, under them or any of them, shall at any time permit any species of
gambling nor manufacture, or sell, or give away, or exchange, or trade, or deal
with in any way, on said premises or any part thereof any spirituous, vinous,

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 malt or other intoxicating liquors (Pacific Grove Retreat Association Housing
Covanent, Pacific Improvement Company Records, 1916).

The conservative tenor of the town continued well into the 20th century and

Pacific Grove was one of the last “dry” towns in California. It wasn’t until 1969 when

“Mayor Earl Grafton, who led the fight for repeal, celebrated by quaffing a glass of

red wine, the city’s first legally served alcoholic drink” (Los Angeles Times, Nov 22,

1969).

After the turn of the century, and overlapping with the final years of the

existence of the Point Alones Village, the economy and social landscape of Monterey

again shifted with the introduction of industrial canneries and the influx of Sicilian and

Sicilian American families. In 1902 the first successful cannery by Frank Booth who

employed assembly-line technologies developed by Kurt Hovden to articulate the

fishing industry with Fordist industrial management. Walton describes the impact that

his company had on Monterey, writing how “with a growing labor monopoloy of

Sicilian fishermen, mechanized production facilities, a ready cannery labor force

including the families of fishermen and displaced ethnic fishers [including Point

Alones Village residents whose village had recently been destroyed], and bountiful

sardine runs, Booth’s cannery led Monterey into the industrial age” (Walton 1997:

249). The sardine industry exploded, leading Monterey to become “the most important

fishing port in the United States and the world’s third largest, by tonnage of

industrially processed fish” (Walton 2001: 186).

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 In 1912 the Pacific Improvement Company sold most of its lands to the Del

Monte Property Company, a consortium of primarily local investors, and left

Monterey (Walton 2001). This company continued the process of subdividing and

“improving” the properties. In Pacific Grove, the Chautauqua continued apace until

the last summer meeting was held in 1926 (Seavey 2005: 31). These religiously-

motivated covenants prohibiting activities such as liquor consumption were not the

only restrictive covenants placed on property sales. It is important to remember that

racial segregation was legal and commonplace. The Del Monte company, for example,

placed the following covenant into the deeds to houses in Pebble Beach: “Said

premises shall not...at any time be occupied or used by Asiatics, Negroes, or any

person born in the Turkish Empire, nor any lineal descendant of such person” (Walton

2001: 182). These covenants were actively used to segregate towns and tracts on the

Monterey Peninsula until 1948 when the U.S. Supreme court, in Shelly V. Kramer,

ruled that such covenants were legally unenforceable. Despite this ruling, many of the

property deeds continued to list these racist covenants for quite some time after their

legality had been abolished.

MONTEREY IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

The history of the Monterey Peninsula after the Point Alones Village burned

down in 1906 is long and fascinating. Many historians and authors have written about

aspects of this history. McKibben’s Beyond Cannery Row (2006) explores the lives of

Sicilian immigrants, focusing on the experiences of women in Monterey. Chiang’s

many texts (2004a, 2004b, 2008a, 2008b) stand at the intersections between

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environmental and social history in Monterey, and Walton (1997, 2003) has written

extensively about class, race, and social identity in the area. Norkunas (1993) has

explored the tourist industry in Monterey, Lydon (1997) has explored the experiences

of Japanese residents in the area, and Palumbi and Stoka (2010) have written a history

of the area with the Monterey Bay itself as the focal point. Perhaps no author has had

so great an impact on public imaginations of Monterey history as John Steinbeck

whose vivid (if fictionalized) descriptions of the area in the years after the Point

Alones Village was destroyed, especially in his books Tortilla Flat (1935), Cannery

Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954), continue to be widely read by a large and

international audience.

This, then, was the local context in which people, artifacts, and images of the

Chinese and Chinese Americans living at the Point Alones Village circulated. Even

though, for most of its existence, the Point Alones Village was about a mile outside of

both Pacific Grove and downtown Monterey, the village itself has history that is

deeply interwoven with that of the broader Monterey Peninsula.

THE CHINESE IN MONTEREY

The story of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans on the Monterey

Peninsula, as told by village descendants, begins sometime in the early 1850s, just

after California became part of the United States, when three ships (though I have also

been told by some village descendants that it was five) left Guangdong with a small

group of Chinese families and sailed across the ocean. One ship, according to family

histories, was lost at sea, one ended up in Mendocino county, and a third ship came to

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the area known as “whaler’s cove” at Pt. Lobos (one of the places named by Vizcaino

on his famous voyage). Unlike many of their contemporaries, these individuals

bypassed the rush to the gold fields and instead settled into a life of fishing and

harvesting the resources of the ocean. While there is no firm historical evidence for

such an early occupation, Lydon [2008: 140] calls evidence for it “circumstantial”), it

is readily apparent that by 1860 “six Chinese fishermen lived [at Point Lobos] in a

small village” (Lydon 2008: 140). The waters off the coast of Point Lobos were

incredibly fertile fishing grounds. Indeed, the lands had been used by local Native

Californian groups for thousands of years prior to the Chinese occupation. The

location was quite some distance away from the nearest large non-Chinese town,

affording the Chinese residents a good deal of privacy. Although it was some distance

removed from large and permanent settlements, the area was a multicultural space

where individuals from different ethnic groups engaged in a variety of economic

activities. For example, in 1862 a Portuguese whaling company established a camp

adjacent to the Chinese settlement. These whalers are the source of the current name

of the cove and the reason why the extant cabin from the Chinese settlement, one of

the oldest Chinese American buildings left standing, is called “whaler’s cabin” instead

of the more accurate “Chinese fisherman’s cabin.” The amount of social interaction

between the Chinese and Portuguese is debated, but it is rumored that at least one

Chinese American individual born at Point Lobos on August 13, 1859, Quock Mui,

spoke Portuguese and “acted as a translator for her parents and the Chinese

immigrants when they needed when they needed to communicate with other groups in

the area” (Lee 2006: 77). Despite its relative isolation, news of the activities of the

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whalers regularly appeared in the local newspapers and the social and economic

activities of Point Lobos clearly articulated with the broader happenings of the

Monterey Peninsula and California.

Although this is the story most commonly told about the earliest Chinese

residents in the Monterey area, other tales have been told. After the 1906 fire burned

the Chinese village at Point Alones to the ground, several of the Chinese individuals

who had lived there filed suit claiming that they had resided at that spot, Point Alones,

since prior to the American occupation of Monterey and were thus entitled to remain

in possession of the land. On May 21st, the San Jose Mercury News reported on this

lawsuit:

The Pacific Improvement Company showed its hand yesterday when its
representative ordered the closing of the street leading to Chinatown. A fence
was erected and the Chinese were notified not to rebuild on the property. The
gate was placed across a passageway that has been a public street for fifty
years and the Chinese say that they will take the obstruction down and rebuild
their town. They intend to move over on the property Monday and use tents
and then they will probably start in to build their new town. If the Pacific
Improvement Company Interferes then the Chinese Six Companies will take
the matter to the Federal Courts. They claim that they own the property and
were located on the present site long before Mexico ceded the country to
America. They say they have records to prove that they were in possession of
the point of land where their former town was built over seventy years ago and
by the term of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo the property belongs to the
company, so they allege (San Jose Mercury News).

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 Though the eviction of the Chinese proceeded apace, the arguments raised by

the Chinese, that they were here before the American annexation of California, present

an interesting narrative and suggest that the Chinese community was well embedded

in the area and able and willing to wage legal battles against politically connected and

powerful figures. A narrative of Chinese settlement prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe

Hidalgo was the one given by Tom Yuen in May, 1906 to the Monterey Cypress. Yuen

told the following history of the village:

The first Chinamen came to Monterey in the spring of 1844. There were three
of them and their names were Tom Bok, Mar Kow and a man named Lee.
They came in a boat from San Francisco and were looking for fishing
grounds... They returned to San Francisco and reported their find of the good
fishing grounds to the few Chinamen who were in Yerba Buena at that time,
and a month and a half later they were joined in Monterey by five other
Chinamen. They obtained permission from a Spaniard who was living at a
point of land now known as China Point [Point Alones] to live there. This
Spaniard was a boat builder and had a dock at the cover at China Point
(Monterey Cypress)

POINT ALONES

The Point Alones Village, located about a mile outside of “Old Monterey,”

was nestled between Point Alones and Point Almejas on the Pacific Coast. Lydon

(2008: 154) dates the earliest Chinese occupation of this village to either 1855 or

1857. That Chinese individuals were present by 1860 is attested to in census records.

In his Old Pacific Capital, Stevenson describes the village thus:

You will come upon a space of open down, a hamlet, a haven among rocks, a
world of surge and screaming sea-gulls. Such scenes are very similar in

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 different climates; they appear homely to the eyes of all; to me this was like a
dozen spots in Scotland. And yet the boats that ride in the haven are of strange
outlandish design; and, if you walk into the hamlet, you will behold costumes
and faces and hear a tongue that are unfamiliar to the memory. The joss-stick
burns, the opium pipe is smoked, the floors are strewn with slips of coloured
paper - prayers, you would say, that had somehow missed their destination -
and a man guiding his upright pencil from right to left across the sheet, writes
home the news of Monterey to the Celestial Empire (Stevenson 1880: 85)

The village, whose strangeness and “picturesque” character was highlighted in

advertisements from the Pacific Improvement Company, was often made the subject

of tourist accounts and newspaper reports. Although the village is called a “Chinese”

fishing village, it is clear from historical records that at least one non-Chinese

individual lived in the town. On April 16h, 1907 the San Jose Mercury News reported

on the death of “Tom Hong,” who they described as “a colored woman, who a few

years ago married a Chinese resident of the old town of Chinese Point which act

gained for her a deal of notoriety.”

Unlike most Chinese and Chinese American towns and settlements in

California during this era, the Point Alones Village was home to a large number of

women and children. By 1870, Lydon writes, “a startling 43% of the 47 Chinese living

in Point Alones were female, and compared with the average 7% in the nationwide

Chinese population, the proportion of women in the Point Alones Village was

extremely high” (Lydon 2008: 156). The women played active roles in social and

economic life in the village. As Lee notes, “Some women fished alongside the men,

while others invented and improved methods for preparing and drying the catch” (Lee

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(2006: 79). Chiang explains the global reach of the local Point Alones fishing industry

when she discusses how “Fishing was never solely a local subsistence activity for the

Chinese, as extensive regional and global networks tied them to places beyond their

villages and fishing grounds.” She continues, explaining how “During his

investigation of the Pacific Coast fisheries in the 1800s, biologist David Starr Jordan

estimated that in good weather the Chinese shipped two hundred to eight hundred

pounds of fresh fish to San Francisco daily and also supplied Gilroy, San Jose, and

other inland towns” (Chiang 2002: 20).

Over time, the primary products that residents of the Point Alones Village

gathered from the sea changed as economic conditions and pressure from non-Chinese

fishing companies pushed the Chinese out of the lucrative abalone market. The squid

fishery became the primary economic focus of the village (Lydon 1985; Chiang 2002),

although even as late as 1899, commercial abalone fishing was described by Vernon

Kellogg, a naturalist who, in an article for The American Naturalist, wrote: “Four of

five species of Haliotis [Abalone] are abundant, and are used for food by the Chinese.

Many are dried and shipped to China” (Kellogg 1899: 631). He continued to describe

the techniques used by village residents to fish for squid, the large numbers of squid

caught using those techniques, and a potential explanation for the value of squid in the

China trade:

Among the cephalopods certain species of Loligo are so abundant that the
catch of the Chinese fishermen for a single night, when spread out on the
ground to dry, will cover five or six acres! The Chinese boats go out by night
with nets and pitch-pine torches, which are hung over the boat’s side to lure the
squid. The squids are dried and shipped to China to be used as food. It is said

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 also that the dried squids are used in China as fertilizer. The duty on fertilizer
in China is very low, the duty on salt very high. By mixing a little dried squid
with a great deal of salt, and calling it fertilizer, a considerable amount of salt
finds its way into the Celestial Kingdom at a very low duty rate (Kellogg 1899:
632).

Kellogg also pointed out another fishing practice rarely mentioned in the

historical literature, the international urchin trade, explaining that “the Chinese

fishermen collect, can, and send to China, to be used as food, large quantities of the

reproductive glands of sea urchins” (Kellogg 1899: 633). Their success in fishing was

not just noted by fisheries experts and naturalists: “The Chinese fishery at Monterey is

doing an immense business this year” exclaimed the San Francisco Bulletin on August

18th, 1874. “The Chinese fishermen at Monterey export annually about 100 tons of

dried fish,” exclaimed the same newspaper on May 25, 1875. Although the national

and international trade in products from the Monterey Bay during the cannery era of

Monterey history would dwarf the output of the Point Alones Village by volume, the

historical record clearly demonstrates that the Chinese and Chinese American

residents of the Point Alones Village established a global market for Monterey Bay

fisheries long before Hovden and Booth ushered in the era of industrial canneries.

Although the village was primarily oriented around the fishing industry, and

the economic base of the community came from the sea, there were other social and

economic venues on the site including places to purchase goods, an employment

office, and social and religious venues including a temple and a small cemetery

located near the village. Villagers also sold trinkets and seashells to passing tourists, a

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fact that reported upon by far-flung newspapers (e.g. an article about Monterey

tourism published in the September 24th, 1892 issue of the Idaho Statesman). Some

have suggested that the presence of an actively maintained cemetery indicated that the

Chinese at the Point Alones Village intended to remain in the United States, as it

demonstrates “the knowledge that one’s spirit would be cared for by children and

grandchildren already born in America” (Lydon 2008: 131).

The Point Alones Village was located about a mile from “Old Monterey” and

about a mile from Pacific Grove, but villagers were clearly not isolated and insulated

from their neighbors. The village was a constitutive part of broader social and political

developments in Monterey and elsewhere and there was a considerable amount of both

collaboration and conflict between the Chinese and their non-Chinese neighbors,

although the latter seems to have often overshadowed the former.

For example, Tuck Lee, an influential California-born Point Alones Village

resident, was an expert at identifying and collecting marine specimens. He

occasionally worked with the marine scientists at Stanford University’s Hopkins

Marine Station which, at that time, was located about a mile away in Pacific Grove. In

fact, he was the first person to collect several previously unidentified species of fish

(Chiang 2004). Kellogg, in his aforementioned report, explains how “the collecting of

fishes is chiefly done by Chinese fishermen, of whom a villagefull lives but half a mile

from the laboratory” (Kellogg 1899: 630) The residents of the Point Alones Village

also maintained economic interactions with their non-Chinese neighbors and, as one

booklet from 1875 explained, “purchase very liberally of the merchants in town, and

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as their trade is always for cash, they are very desirable customers in these hard times”

(McLane 1952: 21)

The village was also made the target of missionary campaigns. Resier explains

that: “Pacific Grove Methodists conducted missions in the village in the 1890s,

including one campaign to send Chinese children to segregated classes at the public

school. The mission also collected donations for small gifts and bundles of supplies

for Chinese families during Thanksgiving and Christmas” (Resier 2003: 157). Resier

explains how one Mary Sackett wrote an editorial in a local paper arguing that

Americans “cannot afford to allow these native-born [Chinese] children to reach

maturity an ignorant alien race” (Resier 2003: 157). Lydon (2008) has also noted that

many non-Chinese individuals visited the Point Alones Village to observe festivals,

the “ring game in particular,” that were annually performed by the residents of Point

Alones.

In consort with broader anti-Chinese sentiment that were spreading throughout

the United States (Pfaelzer 2007), conflicts were a regular part of the interactions

between the Chinese and their non-Chinese neighbors, though they were manifested in

ways that were distinctly localized. One frequent point of conflict was the fishing

methods used by the Chinese. For example, in testimony to the State Assembly

Committee on Fisheries, the December 29th, 1877 issue of the San Francisco Bulletin

reported that commissioners “impressed upon the Committee the necessity of some

kind of legislation to protect the supply of fish from the greed of Chinese and Italian

fishermen. Mr. Redding gave one instance showing that a Chinese fishing company at

Monterey had made, during the past four years, upwards of $800,000 by catching fish

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and shipping the dried product to China.” This conflict extended for decades and the

Monterey New Era, on May 14th, 1902, reported that “The drying of squid at the

Pacific Grove Chinatown has been stopped, complaint having been made by a number

of citizens that the smell caused thereby, and which was blown into the town by the

winds prevalent at this season, was an unbearable nuisance.” The paper then explains

how an additional goal might be accomplished with these new regulations: “regarding

the likelihood of Chinatown fading from the map on account of squid drying being

stopped, there is no reason do doubt that, so far from being losers, both the town and

the [Pacific Improvement] company would ultimately be gainers.” The paper

continues by pointing out the economic benefits of destroying the Chinese village:

“Chinatown runs to the line separating the two cities, and its abolition would not only

make building sites on the water front at the western end of New Monterey immensely

more valuable...” Chiang (2004) catalogs the series of anti-Chinese fishing laws

enacted in Monterey and Pacific Grove and convincingly argues how these laws were

articulated through racist logics that associated the Chinese and their fishing industry

with contamination, threats to health, and foul odors.

By 1905, these conflicts were reaching a high point and the Pacific

Improvement Company began trying to evict or move the village residents, who

resisted these maneuvers (Lydon 2008: 358). In November of that year a headline in

the Monterey New Era gleefully proclaimed that “Chinatown Will Cease To Exist,”

calling it “one of the best pieces of news we have heard for a long time.” But evicting

the Chinese Americans who lived in the village would not prove easy, as Point Alones

residents fought the eviction tooth and nail (Lydon 2008). While hostility towards the

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Chinese was driven by many factors, Lydon (2008: 359) suggests that the tension was

particularly exacerbated the next year by the “estimated 150 Chinese refugees” who

came to Monterey after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the San Francisco

Chinatown. On May 16th, 1906 a fire that broke out at Point Alones would provide

the excuse to finally evict village residents from the land that they had lived on for

generations.

On May 17, 1906 the Pacific Grove Daily Review reported that a fire broke out

“shortly before 8 o’clock” in the evening when it started “in a barn in the west end of

Chinatown which resulted in the almost total destruction of that much discussed

piscatorial settlement. Out of about 50 buildings, shed and shacks only 19 remain: 12

at the west end of the village, four at the east end, and the joss house and three small

huts south of the railroad track.” The Daily Review continued, explaining: “The origin

of the fire is still a matter for surmise. One story is that some Chinese were burning

rubbish near the barn and carelessly started the blaze; another is to the effect that some

parties unknown to the Chinese set the fire in the barn with incendiary intent; while a

third implicates some Chinese boys and the inevitable cigarette.” Rumors of arson

continued to swirl around Monterey, and later reports discussed how “arson was

suspected because 2-inch hoses were cut at the mains” (Monterey Peninsula Herald,

Feb 19, 1970). Although local papers, which had generally advocated for a removal of

the village, did not corroborate this story, it was recounted in the May 18, 1906 issue

of the San Jose Mercury News, which reported that “The burning of Chinatown last

night was evidently of incendiary origin. The fire was discovered in a barn and little

piles of hay had been scattered throughout the building in order that the fire would get

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a good start.” The newspaper continued: “Someone cut the water main during the fire

and this shut off the meager supply of water completely.” The next day, May 19, the

same newspaper reported that “the Chinese believe that their town was set on fire, as a

good many white people had been trying for years to have it removed from its present

location.”

The fire attracted non-Chinese gawkers, some of whom “took the opportunity

the excitement offered to loot and pillage” (Monterey New Era, May 23, 1906). On

May 18, 1906, the San Jose Mercury News explained how “many disgraceful acts of

vandalism were witnessed and the looters had a merry time stealing from the stores.”

In addition to these acts of looting and vandalism, some residents of Monterey and

Pacific Grove assisted the individuals who had been dispossessed by the fire. By all

accounts the volunteer fire department worked hard attempting to douse the flames,

and a number of charitable organizations assisted the Chinese including, according to

the May 20, 1906 issue of the San Jose Mercury News a “charity baseball game” that

quickly organized in Pacific Grove, with Will Jacks, the mayor of Pacific Grove (and

son of David Jacks) heading one of the teams.

The reaction of the Pacific Improvement Company, however, was not so

charitable. The first response of the company in a telegram from A. D. Shepard to J. P.

Pryor sent May 17 that reads: “Do anything necessary to prevent rebuilding” (Shepard

to Pryor, Pacific Improvement Company Records, 1906). On May 23, the Monterey

New Era reported that many Chinese residents had torn down the fences to rebuild

their community, had retained the services of an attorney, and had experienced several

altercations with employees of the Pacific Improvement Company, resulting in the

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arrests of both Chinese individuals and company employees. The Point Alones

residents continually tried to rebuild their community. For example on June 15, an

altercation occurred when “one of the heathen, who had considerable money and is

better educated than the rest attempted to erect a shack on the property, but was

prevented by the guards” (San Jose Mercury News, June 17, 1906). The Chinese

residents also brought charges against employees of the Pacific Improvement

Company. Tom Yuen, for example, “charged Officer Jesse McCoy with exhibiting a

deadly weapon in a rude and angry manner, and officer Wilcoxson was also arrested

for tearing down the house” (San Jose Mercury News, June 17, 1906). Legal disputes

continued and on April 9, 1907, a year later the San Jose Mercury News reported that

“a half dozen” Chinese residents remained on the property. By May 16, the San Jose

Evening News reported that Tuck Lee, the Point Alones resident who so deftly assisted

the Marine biologists, was the “lone occupant of Chinatown.” It was reported that the

other village residents “have been ejected, and have taken up their home at

McAbeeville.” Tuck Lee, the newspaper reported, “has promised to move and in a few

days will do so.”

The McAbeeville settlement that the Evening News wrote of is today more

commonly known as the “McAbee Beach site” Lydon (2008: 377). In this village,

located a short distance from the Point Alones Village site, many former Point Alones

residents continued to live in Monterey and thrive as a community. Lydon (2008) has

detailed the rich history and immense contributions that Point Alones Village residents

and their descendants continued to make to economic, social, and cultural life in

Monterey after the Point Alones Village was burned to the ground.

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 Tuck Lee passed away in 1908 and his funeral was noted in local and regional

newspapers. On November 14th, 1908 the San Jose Mercury News wrote that his

funeral “was well attended by his many friends from every quarter of the Monterey

Peninsula. Deceased had resided here for the better part of his lifetime, and was the

most influential Chinese in Monterey.”

POINT ALONES AFTER THE POINT ALONES VILLAGE

After the fire, the Pacific Improvement Company faced political difficulties

with the property that the village was located upon. They had garnered considerable ill

will from some non-Chinese residents of the town for allowing the Chinese to rent for

so long, and from others for forcing the Chinese to leave. In order to settle these issues

they decided to lease, and then sell, the lot to an academic institution. First they

approached UC Berkeley, even going so far as attempting to bribe faculty members

with free land at pebble beach, but UC Berkeley declined the offer. Stanford

University agreed to purchase part of the land and move their “Hopkins Seaside

Laboratory” to the location. In 1918, the other half of the site was leased to the

“Monterey Boat Building Company.” The ten-year lease was tendered for a total rent

of $11,350 with the option for the Boat Building Company to purchase the property at

any time before 1921 for $2500 an acre. With the recent history of the Point Alones

Village on their minds, in addition to the Pacific Grove prohibitions against gambling

and liquor sales, the lease included a clause that stated: “it is further understood and

agreed that no fish cannery nor any other business or occupation engaged in the actual

handling of fish, shall be placed or conducted upon said premises, and it is further

130
understood and agreed that said property shall not be used for the carrying on of the

fish industry or fro the wharfing or docking of boats for the purpose of unloading or

selling or handling or marketing fish” (Proposal to Steele, Engles, and Fulton. Pacific

Improvement Company Records. 1918). Over time, the land that was leased to the

Boat Building Company and much of the remaining property that had once been the

Point Alones Village has been purchased by the Hopkins Marine Station. It remains a

scientific research station to this day.

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 CHAPTER 4: MATERIALIZING DISCOURSE

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter I attempt to make sense of various non-Chinese descriptions of

the Chinese village at Point Alones. This chapter begins with the premise that these

non-Chinese descriptions were historically efficacious. The creation and circulation of

these documents and descriptions provided primary-source information about daily

life in the Point Alones Village to contemporaneous non-Chinese readers who had

likely never seen or set foot in the village. Rather than being a simple transcript or

catalog of the kinds of events, objects, and bodies that were present in the Point

Alones Village of the past, these media accounts selectively highlighted and bundled

together specific features of the village in order to tell “true stories” about the Village

and its residents. These stories, in turn, drew from and built into larger hegemonic

narratives about race, gender, and national belonging. For an archaeologist, what is

striking about this process is its material dimension. Many of these media accounts

make reference to artifacts, bodies, landscapes, and the other objects and features that

archaeologists use to reconstruct the past.

This chapter builds from the theoretical discussions of previous chapters,

explaining the mechanisms through which hegemonic structures produced and

reproduced social and political realities in a specific historical location. Though the

Point Alones Village may have been imagined as a small, insignificant, “out of the

way” place, it was clearly a site of articulation (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) where global

rhetorics and economies were reiterated.

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 As I have conducted research on the history of non-Chinese writings about

Chinese culture, society, politics, artifacts, and bodies, I have come to notice that two

tropes of exoticization, at first glance contradictory, structured much of the discussion

and debate about China and the Chinese, both during the time that the Point Alones

Village existed and into the present day. One is a discourse that revolves around

danger, often framed in terms of pollution. With this trope, China, the Chinese, and

Chinese looking objects and people are imagined to be dangerous, corrupting, and

excessive. Chinese bodies and political subjectivities represent a clear and present

danger to Western conceptions of normativity. A second common trope is a discourse

that revolves around desire, often framed in terms of assimilation or domestication.

This trope tends to understand the Chinese and Chinese looking objects as eager,

infantile, passive, desirable, refined, and originating in a moribund culture and society.

Debates conducted by non-Chinese in the 1800s about the “proper role” for Chinese

immigrants and Chinese Americans in American political life were often argued

within the bounds of these two tropes: “anti-Chinese” forces argued that the Chinese

were fundamentally undesirable and were a danger to society, while “pro-Chinese”

forces suggested that these Chinese simply needed to shed their “old ideologies” and

sough off their moribund culture in order to assimilate to “mainstream American

society.”

In this section, I argue that instead of being contradictory, these discourses

both served to establish and reiterate what Laclau and Mouffe (1985) have called a

“constitutive other” of Western political discourse. Indeed, what they share is a

statement about a fundamental difference between Chinese culture on one hand, and

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Western society and socio-political values on the other. Ultimately, I argue that certain

kinds of archaeological features of the village were made to appear “objectively

present” in the minds of non-Chinese individuals through their articulation with these

discourses.

I am framing these discursive productions in binaric terms, “The West” and

“China,” not because these two imaginary terratorializaitons represent social, political,

and geographic orders that are radically different in fact. Instead, I explore this

difference because a binaric conception of China and The West was the lens through

which the Chinese in California were understood during the 19th century. It is critical

to remember that The West and China were not the only two global powers engaged in

trade and the exchange of goods and ideas during this time period. Furthermore, neat

divisions between the two are difficult to sustain in fact. The histories of both China

and The West are so deeply intertwined that a scholar would have difficulty

recognizing one without also recognizing the other. It is also important to remember

that substantial differences existed within the various countries and provinces that

made up Europe and North American and that, likewise, China was a large and

complex country with international boundaries, a social and ethnic composition, and

an economic landscape that has shifted through the centuries. By understanding the

rhetorical and material processes though which these co- constitutive places were

made “different,” I hope to better understand how the history of the Point Alones

Village unfolded and how social difference is created with reference to specific sites

and objects of material culture.

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OVERVIEW

The two tropes that I have identified extend deep into the past and are present

in some of the earliest non-Chinese accounts of Chinese culture and East-West

interactions. I begin this chapter by briefly tracing the history of how non-Chinese

Westerners have accounted for Chinese and Chinese-looking material culture. I argue

that these texts both reflected and produced Western imaginations of Chinese identity.

These texts served as nodes in a process of discursive formation whereby particular

kinds of material culture and bodies were bundled together with affective connections

to particular dispositions, racial characteristics, and historical contexts. In essence,

these texts provided the raw material thorough which differences between China and

The West has long been imagined and practiced.

I then read accounts of material culture at the Point Alones Village written by

non-Chinese individuals in the context of these historical discourses. I look at the

Point Alones Village as one example of how material culture and racial identity are

bounded together with reference both to historical precedent and to the specific local

and contextual situation at hand. These dual references reproduce hegemonic

structures while simultaneously modifying those same structures, introducing an

element of change and the possibility for contingency. I demonstrate that the awkward

fit between practice and rhetoric necessitates fungibility in the citation and repetition

of hegemony, a process that allows for local situations to inform and, ultimately,

change global productions.

Foucualt (1972: 32) argues that discourse is “the interplay of the rules that

make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time.” The “objects”

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that Foucault discusses are not necessarily artifacts per se. They can equally be

objectified concepts. Foucault focused on topics such as “madness” and “sexuality.” In

this chapter I focus on the categories of “Chinese” and “foreign.” These were

particularly salient discursive formations that allowed bodies and artifacts with a

material presence to be spoken about and made sense of through their circulation,

repetition, and juxtaposition with other objects, bodies, and concepts. As these

discourses iterated through time, different components, aesthetics, bodies, and objects

were incorporated or left aside (Butler 1999). The process created a “grid of

intelligibility” in the minds of historical subjects that allowed for non-Chinese

individuals to “make sense” of the Chinese presence at Pacific Grove. It accounted for

non-Chinese descriptions of village life, architecture, and the physical appearance of

village residents - both fictional descriptions and the non-fictional accounts of “news”

that occurred or related to the village. The value of juxtaposing this historical analysis

with archaeology is that, in the contemporary world, what Foucault called the “grid of

intelligibility of the social order” is significantly different than it was in the late 1800s.

We see different artifacts and aesthetics than were seen by individuals living in the

19th century.

Factors that have contributed to this change include, but are not limited to, the

development of scientific archaeology, ethnographic knowledge about China, the

Chinese, and Chinese Americans, changing race relations in the United States,

different sociopolitical conditions in California, access to diverse lines of evidence,

and the author’s personal experiences with village descendants. These developments

have all established a discursive framework through which an alternative

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understanding of history at the Point Alones Village can be imagined than the one that

was imagined in the 19th century.

CHINA, THE CHINESE, AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM

Much of this chapter addresses how material culture and race are co-

constitutive. As such, I would like to very briefly discuss the history of racial thinking

in Western society. I explored archaeological theorizations of race in Chapters 1 and 2.

This chapter explores a more expansive historical genealogy of the concept, especially

as it was applied to the Chinese, situating the Point Alones Village within 19th century

global currents.

Despite a persistent ideology that posits racial classifications as a “natural”

category, anthropologists, historians, and biologists have conclusively and repeatedly

demonstrated that modern racial categories were gradually invented and naturalized in

consort with European global exploration and colonial expansion. Although perceived

physical differences between individuals and groups of people have long been

commented upon and even used to justify and compel violent exclusion and

inequality, these discourses of difference were not imagined to be global in scale,

anchored to a systematic classification of skin pigmentation, and driven by powerful

appeals to “nature” and “science.” As Sanjek (1994: 1) explains, race is “the

framework of ranked categories segmenting the human population that was developed

by western Europeans following their global expansion beginning in the 1400s.” Over

time various theories and typologies of racial difference have been (and indeed

continue to be) formulated and used to justify inequality and the social order. Race is

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still a deep structuring principle in contemporary society (West 1993) and Western

society continues to wrestle with the colonial legacy of racialization and attendant

socioeconomic and cultural exploitation (Wise 2004).

Despite constant claims that race is emergent from nature, its imagined

biogenic origins and the racial typologies that were said to be natural outgrowths of

that biology have always been malleable and historically contingent. For example,

groups that in one historical or social context were perceived of as “white” by the

politically dominant group were often perceived of as “not white” in other historical or

social contexts (Ignatiev 1996; Orser 1998; Camp 2009). Likewise, in some contexts

groups and individuals have strategically manipulated the instability and malleability

of their own racial classifications and self-identification, occasionally even inventing

novel racial categories, in order to achieve certain political or social goals. Voss’s

example of ethnic and racial “ethnogenesis” in a Spanish-colonial presidio is

illustrative of this phenomenon occurring in California a mere 50 years or so before

the Point Alones Village was settled by Chinese immigrants (Voss 2008a).

The invention and deployment of racial typologies is relevant to the study of

Chinese American identity in California because racial classifications and the cultural,

social, and political dispositions that were attached to those invented races prefigured

the encounter between Chinese and non-Chinese individuals in California. European

and American scholars had long considered the Chinese as a race separate from both

black and white groups. In Blumenbach’s 1795 racial classificatory scheme, what

Sanjeck (1994: 5) has termed “a high point of sorts,” the term “Mongolian” was used

to refer to “Asiatics” who lived east of “the Obi, the Caspian, and the Ganges”

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(Blumenback 1828: 553). Far from being politically neutral, these academic sources

were used to justify Chinese exclusion. This can be seen in legal cases such as re Ah

Yup, an 1878 case where the U.S. Federal court of appeals ruled that the Chinese were

“not white” for the purposes of naturalization. Citing Blumenbach’s typology, the

court held that there are five races:

First, the Caucasian or white race, to which belong the greater part of the
European nations and those of Western Asia; second, the Mongolian, or yellow
race, occupying Tartary, China, Japan, etc.; third, the Ethopian or negro
[black] race, occupying all of Africa, except the north; fourth, the American, or
red race, containing the Indians of North and South America; and fifth, the
Malay, or brown race, occupying the islands of the Indian Archipelago.”

As I discuss the emergence of various constructions of the Chinese ‘other’ at

the Point Alones Village through a series of discursive statements highlighting an

exotic aesthetic of difference, these emergent racial typologies should be kept in mind.

Despite the clear and significant influence of these “scientific” racial typologies, it

should not be assumed that the qualities and characteristics attached to the Chinese

“others” were simply derivative from those typologies. Indeed, imaginations of the

Chinese as an “other,” as one of several foils to “the West,” predates (and in many

cases informed) the elaboration of scientific racism. Imaginations of an “exotic China”

were both constituted by and constitutive of the structures and content of racial

thinking as many of the generative concepts that used to imagine race as an immutable

and material category were culled from early accounts of physical, social, moral, and

spiritual difference.

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CHINA IN THE WEST BEFORE SCIENTIFIC RACISM

The history of “knowledge” about China in the West extends deep into the past

- long before regular direct trade routes had been established as part of the global

colonial expansion of European states and the spread of early global capitalism. The

descriptions that emerged from these accounts, particularly when paired with material

culture from the “Far East” that was brought into Europe through various direct and

indirect means, provided Europeans with the beginnings of a “grid of intelligibility”

through which China and the Chinese could be made sense of when direct face-to-face

contacts, trade, and conflict occurred.

Much of the recorded early contact - direct and indirect - was mediated through

religious frameworks. For example, representatives of the East-Syrian Church were

present at Xi’an in the court of the Tang dynasty as early as 635 C.E. (Standaert 2001

xi). In 781, a stele was erected in Shaanxi upon which was written an interpretation, in

Chinese, of the story of Jesus. The text indicates that Christian individuals were, to

some degree, “integrated into the imperial administration of the Tang dynasty”

(Charbonnier 2007: 39). Aside from providing an historical example of early direct

contact between “the West” (or, at least, the “Christian world”) and “the East,” this

stele served an important role in later rhetorics of colonialism when it was

“rediscovered” by Jesuit missionaries during the 1620s who widely reported on its

discovery and used its presence as an historical justification for their continued

presence in China. The Jesuits and others clearly viewed this history from what

Standaert (2001: 16-17) has identified as a “Western angle,” depicting Christianity as

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a force “expanding enterprise throughout Central Asian and the Far East. It could

equally be understood from what Standaert calls a “Central Asian angle” in which

these exchanges are better understood as not “a purely religious but rather as a

multicultural phenomenon and an interweaving of cultures in constant flux along the

Silk Roads” (Standaert 2001: 16-17).

In the mid 13th century there is evidence for the first recorded Catholic contact

with Chinese officials and Chinese political structures (Standaert 2001). Two

Franciscan monks voyaged to the Mongolian capital where they visited with officials

in the Chinese court. These voyages were important because they represent an early,

reliable, and recorded direct encounter between individuals from China and

individuals from “The West.” The Franciscans wrote accounts of their journeys upon

their return to Europe and “although these friars did not penetrate into China proper,

the accounts that they wrote informed the Christian West of the religious freedom

enjoyed by a large population of Nestorians [Syrian Christians] at the court and in the

land of the Great Khan” (Standaert 2001: 46).

Despite the paucity of early examples of direct and indirect interaction, China

and the East had currency in the imagination of at least some of European individuals

during the medieval period. As Suzanne Conklin Akbari (2008: 8) has explained:

“rarely visited and hence scarcely known to medieval travelers, China was nonetheless

vividly imagined.”

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MARCO POLO

The most famous of the early travelers to China, and perhaps the single author

most responsible for “introducing” coherent and stable narratives of “China” to

Western imaginations, is Marco Polo, the Venetian voyager whose travels to Asia

during the mid 11th century were published and widely circulated throughout Europe.

Even if, as some authors suggest, Marco Polo did not actually visit China (Wood

1996), his observations and descriptions formed a foundation upon which many later

hegemonic formulations about Chinese difference were built. For example, early

connections between “the East” and sexual receptiveness were established in Polo’s

text. As Strickland writes, “It has already been observed that the eastern practices of

keeping multiple wives and making wives available to traveling strangers are given

repeated emphasis throughout the Devisement [Polo’s text]” (Strickland 2008: 30).

Strickland continues, arguing that “especially titillating must have been the discussion

that follows this particular image of the Khan’s sexual rota of six young women, every

three days” (Strickland 2008: 30).

THE VISUAL/TEXTUAL GLOSS

A particularly interesting component of the various editions of the Marco Polo

text published in the years after his voyage, and one that illustrates how hegemonic

structures are reiterated and materialized through a relationship between text, reader,

and history, are the illustrated plates that would often accompany early editions of the

text. Strickland (2008) has explained how these accompanying drawings often depict

the places, people, and events present in Marco Polo’s text using images that would

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have been quite familiar to Western readers (but that would almost certainly have been

foreign and unintelligible to contemporaneous Chinese readers). Scenes of castles,

nobility in Western clothing, and allusions to other Western texts and stories abound

in these drawn depictions of Polo’s journey. Even when ‘fanciful’ or ‘exotic’ material

was added, it was composed in such as way as to be intelligible to Western readers and

to have stronger reference to objects and aesthetics in the West than anything that

would have been found in China. For example, Strickland writes about how:

In an image from BNF fr. 2810 [a particular edition of the text of the Marco
Polo text], the Khan engages in his weekly hunt in the private park that
surrounds his summer palace in Ciandu (Shangdu), on the northeast coast of
China […]. The image also contains some exotic additions: the Khan wears not
conventional western hunting gear, but a bright red robe and fanciful eastern
headgear as he prepares to ride across the river on his white horse, not with
dogs, but with a trained leopard in tow […]. In its basic outlines, however, to
western viewers this was a recognizable scene of a huntsman luring his falcon
in a northern European forest setting, with a northern Gothic castle and even a
windmill visible in the distance (Strickland 2008: 34).

This visual gloss of the text suggest that a “grid of intelligibility” that marked

the Chinese as aesthetically different was present but that the referent for “China” was

more strongly centered on demonstrably “Western” political tropes and social

narratives. In this case, illustrators (and presumably most readers as well) did not have

the material in their “aesthetic toolkit” to represent China in discursively consistent

ways that articulated or connected with present-day (or 19th century) imaginations of

Chinese aesthetic difference. As we will see in this chapter, the “illustrations” that

accompanied textual descriptions of the Chinese developed over the next several

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hundred years to include a specifically “Chinese” aesthetic that was heavily dependent

on “Chinese” and “Chinese looking” material culture.

SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE

A second medieval text that proved exceptionally influential in establishing the

“grid of intelligibility” for non-Chinese Westerners was the quazi-fictional book of Sir

John Mandeville. This book was purported to be an account of a British knight’s

voyage to the Middle East, China, and other “strange and foreign” locations. With the

Polo text, it was another description of China that was widely disseminated across

Europe. The book presents a series of fanciful encounters and almost certainly blended

material gathered from firsthand accounts or merchant voyages with heresy, and even

complete fiction. For example, the following passage is clearly fictional: “In that

country be folk that have but one foot, and they go so blyve that it is marvel. And the

foot is so large, that it shadoweth all the body against the sun, when they will lie and

rest them” (Mandeville 1900: 105).

Large sections of the text were presumably based upon the account of Odoric

of Pordenone, an Italian traveler who visited the East during the 1320s (Sobecki

2002). Nevertheless, despite the clearly fictional quality of much of this book,

Kohanski has argued that that “the Book [of Mandeville] in its own day was almost

certainly regarded as a source of information, both interesting and useful” (Kohanski

(2001: x). Another interesting feature about this text is its polyphony. There are many

different versions of the text. Kohanski explains how “what most studies have not

grappled with, however, is the diversity of the subject material itself; the multiple

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nature of the Book of John Mandeville, as a work that exists in some twenty-one

attested versions, with a high degree of substantive as well as incidental variation”

(Kohanski 2001: xi). The polyphonic characterization of China in the text

demonstrates that ideas about the proper objects, aesthetics, and dispositions to locate

in “China” were being actively imagined and re-imagined long before regular contacts

between China and The West were established.

Like the account of Marco Polo, the book of Mandeville tended to describe the

Chinese in positive or neutral terms. This is in stark contrast to other places and

peoples who are often labeled with evil qualities, such as the people of the “Isle of

Lamary” who “eat more gladly man’s flesh than any other flesh” (Mandeville 1900:

120). Indeed, the chapter about China (referred to as Cathay in his text) begins with a

very positive description: “Cathay is a great country and a fair, noble and rich, and full

of merchants. Thither go merchants all years for to seek spices and all manner of

merchandises, more commonly than in any other part” (Mandeville 1900: 139-140).

Mandeville’s description of the capital of Cathay and the palace complex makes the

place sound like an exotic and ethereal realm of excess and pleasure, qualities that

would continue to be associated with China during the existence of the Point Alones

Village. Another tropes present in the Mandeville text that persisted for centuries was

the idea that the Chinese eat rats: “And they eat hounds, lions, leopards, mares and

foals, asses, rats and mice and all manner of beasts, great and small, save only swine

and beasts that were defended by the old law. And they eat all the beasts without and

within, without casting away of anything, save only the filth” (Mandeville 1900:

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164). The historical time depth of these tropes indicates their influential role in

structuring the grid of intelligibility between China and the West .

MING DYNASTY

The amount of direct contact between China and the West declined after 1368

when the Ming dynasty ascended to the Chinese throne. As Standaert explains: “While

the presence of Christians in China is attested to in the official sources in the Yuan

dynasty, the Ming sources are entirely silent on descendents of the Yuan Christians”

(Standaert 2001: 97). He continues, discussing how: “This decline can be linked to

processes both within China and within Europe including the dynastic change, the

black plague, the end of the crusades, and the decline of the Mongol khanates”

(Standaert 2001: 98).

Despite this decline, indirect links that were maintained between China and the

West during the Ming were essential in forming the discursive connections that

Westerners made with China and with Chinese looking objects. Throughout this

period, even when there were no formal missionaries in China, goods and products

were exchanged along the “Silk Roads.” The value of these products lay in their

scarcity, their materiality, and the affective connections that were built around them.

EARLY JESUIT CONTACT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

Although “the first official contacts between China and Portugal were

established in 1514” (Standaert 2001: 295), trade and exchange was not commonplace

until after 1554, a critical turning point in the history of relations between china and

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the West.” This was the year when Portuguese and Chinese merchants began directly

and legally trading with one another at Macau. Much of the information we have from

this time period, and an important force that drew from and contributed to the Western

grid of intelligibility, are the writings of Catholic missionaries, especially members of

the Jesuit order.

An interesting note here is the gendered dimension of this early missionary

work. In stark contrast to the missionary work that was conducted during the 19th

century, both in China proper and in California among Chinese Americans, before

1800 women were generally excluded from European missions to China, ostensibly

because “women were thought not to be able to bear all the dangers and hazards of

potentially dangerous territory” (Standaert 2001: 298).

The number and percentage of Catholic missionaries expanded over the years

and by the 18th century the missionaries were becoming a significant presence in

Macau and surrounding areas. During this time, the Jesuits adopted an explicit

“strategy for conversion” that both drew from, and contributed to, normative Western

understandings of Chinese culture and society. These strategies are important because

they both reflect existing ideas of Chinese culture and social structure and they

modeled future missionary work, providing a guide that future Christian missionaries

could look towards and a foil against which they (especially protestant missionaries)

could position themselves. Standaert describes this four-part system as including:

1. A policy of accommodation or adaptation to Chinese culture (Standaert 2001:

310).

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 2. A focus on “propagation and evangelism ‘from the top down.’ This was

conducted in hopes that the conversion of wealthy and powerful officials

would both create a more open and welcoming environment for Christian

missions and also encourage less powerful Chinese subjects to convert”

(Standaert 2001: 310).

3. “Using European science and technology in order to attract the attention of the

educated Chinese and convince them of the high level of European

civilization” (Standaert 2001: 310).

4. Openness and tolerance of Chinese values. Specifically, the Jesuits considered

Confucianism to be “a philosophy based on natural law” that “contained the

idea of God.” While Buddhism and Taoism were considered to conflict with

Christianity, the Jesuits advocated for a coexistence between Confucianism

and Christianity (Standaert 2001: 311).

Playing upon many of the positive depictions of China that authors such as

Marco Polo and John Mandeville provided, many of these early Jesuit missionaries

communicated to the West a vision of China that was positive and that contained

numerous references to “higher culture” and their “illustrious civilization.”

THE “CHINESE SAGE”

During the Ming-era missionary expeditions, a trope that was to contain

particularly strong salience became established and widely disseminated in the West.

This is the image of the disciplined and knowledgeable “Chinese sage,” modeled after

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Confucius, who contained all the facilities necessary for higher reason and needed

only to be introduced to Western civilization (primarily through the teachings of Jesus

Christ) in order to become a “politically and morally responsible” individual. This

served an instrumental as well as ideological purpose. A point explored by Jensen

(1993, 1997). As he explains:

In Jesuit hands the indigenous Kongzi [Confucius] was resurrected from distant
symbolism into life, heroically transmuted and made intelligible as
“Confucius,” a spiritual confrere who alone among the Chinese had preached
an ancient gospel of monotheism now forgotten. As the Italian Padres
imagined him, this Chinese saint and his teachings on the one God, shungdi,
had presaged their arrival and it was with this presumption that they undertook
a restoration of what they termed his “true learning” (zhengxue). In this
manner, Ruggieri, Ricci, and several generations of “accommodationist”
Fathers construed Kongzi through a timeless vertical relation with divinity,
recognizing him as “Confucius” while inventing themselves, qua ru, as native
defenders of the Sage’s “primordial ru” (xiunru) doctrine. This construction
established and grounded in theological and historical ‘fact’ certain discursive
attachments to the notion of Chineseness (Jensen 1993: 415)

In fact, reading the Chinese through this trope, some Jesuits suggested that “the

ancient Chinese had never worshipped idols but had served the one true God.” (Van

Kley 1971: 366).

Batten compares the construction of the “Chinese sage” with the construction

of the “noble savage,” another important trope through which Westerners imagined a

different “other,” the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas:

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 The Chinese Sage posed similar problems. While the Noble Savage was
uneducated and simple, the Chinese Sage was enlightened and sophisticated.
Moreover, his enlightenment came from Confucius, who in may respects
sounded suspiciously like Jesus. As a myth, the Chinese Sage certainly dates
back to the Jesuit missionaries who tried to convert China using what the
eighteenth-century Englishmen saw as a clever brand of natural religion. Jesuit
failures dated from the intervention of the pope in such free though. In any
event, by the time Johnson translated Father Jerome Lobno’s Voyage to
Abyssinia in 1735, the concept of the Chinese Sage had become so standard
that Johnson could show his orthodox credentials by claiming that his readers
would find on his pages no ‘romantic absurdities’ such as ‘Chinese perfectly
polite and completely skilled in all sciences’ (Batten 1990: 151).

This trope was seized upon by political and social reformers in the West. As

Batten explains:

The discovery of this well-organized, advanced culture that knew nothing of

the Christian message proved a trauma to the orthodox, a delight to the liberal.
Leibniz, for example, could claim that the Chinese should send missionaries to
instruct Europe in natural philosophy just as Europe had sent missionaries to
instruct China in revealed religion. And Hume could claim that the Chinese
literati were ‘the only regular body of deists in the universe.’ Some travelers
and some philosophers using their accounts even went so far as to claim that
the Chinese wrote a universal language, having escaped the curse of Babel. For
a century interested in all things universal, this was heady stuff indeed (Batten
1990: 151)

Although this trope references China and the Chinese, Rowbotham suggests

that “it was, in fact, the simplification, to suit their own needs, of an ancient, complex

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and effective system of religion, ethics, and social philosophy” (Rowbotham 1945:

224).

The brief florescence of contract between China and the West during the Ming

was diminished in large part due to the rites controversy, a dispute within the Catholic

church “over the extent to which Chinese Catholics could participate in Chinese ritual

observations honoring their ancestors” (Uhalley and Wu 2001: 127). In 1721, largely

in response to Catholic attempts to surpress traditional Chinese spiritual practices, the

Kangxi emperor prohibited Christian missionaries from preaching in China.

PROTESTANT CHINESE MISSIONS

When compared with Catholic missionaries, the entry of Protestant

missionaries to China is a recent historical development. Because of restrictions on the

activities of foreign missionaries in China, many of the earliest Protestant missionaries

in China began by working in and with overseas Chinese communities. For example,

Robert Morrison, one of the first Protestant missionaries to live in China, founded a

program called the “the Ultra-Ganges Mission” and organized a large base of

operations among overseas Chinese in Malacca in 1817 (Moffett 2003: 289). The

agenda of many of these missionaries did not map neatly onto the agenda of colonial

officials or capitalists. Conflict between Protestants regarding China, especially

surrounding the opium trade, was commonplace.

A common strategy of early Protestant missions was to fund schools. These

schools were designed to both train Chinese students in a “European” fashion and to

create Chinese natives who would “evangelize” their fellow countrymen. Through the

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publications of reports on these various endeavors, individuals in the West learned

about China. New “knowledge” about Chinese society and Chinese life began to

appear in these reports. For example, Elijah C. Bridgman, a missionary sent to China

by an interdenominational Protestant group, “the American Board of Commissioners

for Foreign Missions” (Moffett 2003: 294) wrote a periodical while in China titled

Chinese Repository that became “one of the most widely read periodical about China -

religious or secular - in the first half of the nineteenth century” (Moffett 2003: 294).

Medicine was another route through which evangelism took form, both as a way to

impress the Chinese with advanced technology and as a way to receive access to

places and spaces that would have been closed to non-medical specialists, such as the

offices of Chinese administration officials (Moffett 2003: 294).

ADVENTURE NARRATIVES AND COMMON TROPES

In the 19th century more information “about China” was brought to non-

Chinese audiences through the publications of a myriad different travelogues and

accounts of voyages (missionary, commercial, and leisure) to China. There were many

of these books published. An illustrative example can be found in Round the World on

a Wheel, written in 1899 by John Foster Fraser. This text is characteristic of a wider

genre of travel writing that was extremely popular in the late 19th century. The book

describes the adventures of the author, a young British man, as he rides his bicycle

across Europe and Asia (accompanied by a legion of rarely-mentioned porters, guides,

and assistants). The author writes considerably about his time in China and generally

paints a hostile and altogether unwelcoming picture of the country. Upon crossing into

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China his first words are “We were in China - the great, mysterious Middle Kingdom”

(Fraser 1899: 276). His first encounters with the Chinese are described in decidedly

negative terms, as an encounter with “frightful-featured Chinamen” (Fraser 1899: 270)

and “wild repellent warriors, ready to cut down any British subject who ventures on

the wrong side of the creek that divides the empires“ (Fraser 1899: 271).

FILTH AND SQUALOR

A common trope used by Fraser to describe China is the descriptions of filth

and squalor. He regularly describes how dirty and squalid China, and the Chinese,

appear to him. For example, he explains that a Chinese individual “never bathes. He

would as soon lose his queue as be washed all over” (Fraser 1899: 321). Describing

his trip across China, he includes ample expressions of disgust. For example:

We struck into a region of wretchedness. Every little village was a mass of

filth; every person was caked with dirt; the women were all the victims of
goiter; the men were all sore-eyed and diseased; it seemed as if more than half
the children were imbecile. The sight was sickening. The people were plunged
in loathsome degradation, and the most terrible and saddening thought was that
they knew no better, and that they were quite content and even happy amid
their vile and repulsive surroundings (Fraser 1899: 311).

Even formal and religious structures are not spared the “dirty” designation:

“From what I could observe of the interior of the houses in general, I should suppose

the inhabitants not remarkable for cleanliness. The Chinese temples, which are

numerous, contribute but little to the embellishment of the town” (Fraser 1899: 279).

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THE EXOTIC

A second common trope in these writings is also emphasized in Fraser’s

travelogue when he highlights the “exotic looking” dress and decor that he encounters

during his voyage. For example, in Yunnan he describes a “strange, little-known,

warrior race.” (Fraser 1899: 282). He continues, describing how, while traveling

through the rest of China, “frequently we saw Chinese guard-houses, and the Celestial

soldiers with baggy red coats, trimmed with velvet and with inscriptions on the back,

looked half like heralds in a circus procession, and half like excited tea-chests” (Fraser

1899: 282). This situation is instantly transformed when he walks into the British

district of Shanghai:

Ten minutes more I emerged from the bazaar - I stepped from China
into England. The streets were wide and macadamized, there were pavements,
gas-lamps, big homelike houses. I was in the British settlement; and there was
a policeman; and a dog-cart; and there was the Hotel Metropole! And also
there were Lunn and Lowe, who had been waiting for me a fortnight, and
quietly recuperating. And there was a pyramid of letters, the first letters I had
received for five months” (Fraser 1899: 402).

This exotica is mapped onto aesthetic imaginations of the Chinese that Fraser

had developed before he had even set foot in China. For example, he explicitly

connects one of his interpretations of the Chinese landscape with “willow pattern”

ceramics, a key aesthetic marker for “China” and “the Chinese” in Western society at

the time:

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 At the upper end of the Taeping valley the scenery began to have a distinctly
willow-pattern aspect, almost as you find it pictorially represented on your
dinner-plates. There were ridiculous hooped bridges over unnecessary brooks,
hobbling Chinese carrying break-back loads swung at the end of bamboo
poles, cactus trees contorted into bewildering shapes, scoop-roofed summer
houses on tiny islands with no boat in the picture to reach them, and a golden-
knobbed temple rising in the background. All that was absent were the two
love-making or quarrelsome birds in the upper foreground, but there was
sufficient compensation, we thought, in the presence of three bicycles (Fraser
1899: 285).

MORIBUND CULTURE, FEMININE SENSUALITY

Frasier also repeats the trope that imagines the Chinese as an “antique” society

that has lapsed into a moribund political status due to the cultural conservatism of the

Chinese and their preoccupation with matters of the flesh. For example, He argues that

“the Chinese might be called in general a sober people, if they were not so greatly

addicted to sensual pleasures, to which they are perfect slaves.” (Fraser 1899: 284).

Regarding their cultural conservatism and ethnocentrism, Fraser writes: “It is no good

arguing with a Chinese [...] His ancestors were civilized and learned in Confucius

when your ancestors were smearing themselves with blue paint and eating raw fish.

Should you try to prove that two and two are not five he will simply smile

contemptuously and say, ‘Two and two are five in China’” (Fraser 1899: 310). He

repeats this trope several times in the text. For example, he sardonically relays an

imagined Chinese conservatism and ethnocentrism to his readers when he notes: “and

then the ridiculousness of fancying that China was but a section of the Eastern

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hemisphere! You have only to look at a Chinese map to see that China is the great

middle kingdom of the earth” (Fraser 1899: 315). In another example, Fraser provides

his readers with a story about visiting a Chinese shoemaker to have his shoes repaired.

The shoemaker refuses, saying “they are curious shoes, not at all like those worn in

China. My father, who was a shoemaker, never mended a pair of shoes like these, and

I’m quite sure my grandfather never did; therefore, I’m not going to mend them”

(Fraser 1899: 315). Explicit connections between China and European antiquity are

made in the text, although China is always found somewhat lacking. For example,

when he encounters mileage stones on Chinese roads Fraser suggests that:

There was a striving after a pseudo-Grecian artistry. Each stone was

surmounted with a bust, such - if you trust the artist - as line all Ionian groves
of Homer and Thucydides and Aesculapius and other singing, historical-
romancing, and physicking worthies. But the Chinese busts lacked finish. Most
of them had a kind of Thackerayian nose, which is not becoming even in
sandstone. On the whole they reminded me of the battered ancients that line
the corridor to your left on entering the British Museum, and who gaze at you,
stony-eyed, as you wend your way to the refreshment-room (Fraser 1899: 362).

On another road, Fraser again emphasizes the moribund antiquity of China when he

writes, “A prepared Chinese road is worse than no road. The Chinese have a proverb

that their roads are good for ten years and bad for ten thousand. We traveled in the

second epoch” (Fraser 1899: 285). The Chinese are also explicitly compared to

women in the text, such as when Fraser describes witnessing a sporting event: “Now a

Chinaman throws the same way a woman in England throws, not very accurately”

(Fraser 1899: 386).

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CONCLUSIONS

When Fraser finally leaves China, the aesthetic that he firmly highlights in his

travelogue are the “clean white sheets” that line the bed of the white missionaries who

receive him. In his words: “And how delighted we were to receive the warm

handshakes of Mr. and Mrs. Jensen, and to have clean white snowy sheets on our beds.

White sheets after months of dirty straw on hard boards! It was paradise” (Fraser

1899: 327). I have included this description of the Fraser text not because it directly

attends to the Point Alones Village. Instead, I have included this long description of

the text because it demonstrates the extent to which specific and powerful discourses

about “China” and “the Chinese” were circulating globally simultaneously with the

face-to-face interactions that were occurring at the Point Alones Village. Many of

these same discourses resurface in debates and discussions about the Point Alones

Village, though they resurface with a distinctly local flavor.

INLAND CHINA MISSION

Although there were many groups of Protestant missionaries who voyaged to

China during the 19th and 20th centuries, perhaps no single organization made as

substantive an impact in the ways that “China” was imagined in the United States as

the Inland China Mission. In addition to its size and impact, the Inland China Mission

is particularly interesting because of the large percentage of single female missionaries

whom it employed and the novel techniques for missionary activities that they

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professed, including dressing in traditional Chinese clothing and adopting many

Chinese customs while on assignment.

This demographic composition occasionally made them the object of ridicule.

As Standardt writes “Some old China hands had dismissed this new mission, when its

first boatload of volunteers arrived in 1866, as a dubious upstart, doomed to failure. It

was overloaded with single women, they said. It was ridiculed as ‘the pigtail mission’

for having its missionaries adopt Chinese ways of dress and hairstyle” (Standardt

2001: 464). In a very substantive way, and in a process that rippled through California

and even directly impacted popular descriptions of the Point Alones Village, women’s

involvement in the inland Chinese mission and the “civilizing” process was often

directly related to rhetoric and struggles for women’s rights. For example, Lottie

Moon, a female missionary who traveled to China in 1873 wrote: “what women want

who come to China is freedom to do the largest possible work. What women have a

right to demand is perfect equality” (Standardt 2001: 478). Missionaries such as these

often unfavorably compared the Chinese who lived in China with the Chinese who

emigrated to the United States. An 1892 article with an unknown author published in

The Sewanee Review, a missionary journal explains this distinction and is worth citing

at length:

Whatever other claim the Chinese may have upon our time and attention, there
is no question that in the minds of those who have lived and worked among
them, that, they are, as a rule, the most misunderstood people upon the earth
to-day. This arises from a variety of causes. They are very far away from us.
Only a limited number of them ever come to our shores, and those from the
extreme Southern provinces, the Central and Northern Chinese rarely, if ever,

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 leaving their own country, since the popular sentiment both of government and
people is very strong against emigration. Then again our environment is
different from theirs; we are a modern nation, a Western nation, and a
Christian nation. It is not meant by the last statement that we dwell in a land
where everyone lives up to the high moral code of the New Testament, but
simply that the great forces of evil, which are the same all the world over, are
here restrained and held in check by our religion. We are a modern nation, and
it is very difficult for us to form a correct opinion concerning the state of things
in a nation that has practically stepped at once out of the ages of antiquity into
the present. We are a Western nation, we are essentially the product of Roman
civilization, or more strictly of the Greek civilization which preceded it; their
architecture, their literature, their language, their logic, their very thought color
everything in this Western world. When we come to China and the Chinese,
we go back and antedate all that is Roman or Greek; so that even the very
phraseology that we use when speaking of this Eastern people, is oftentimes
erroneous. What do we mean, for instance, when we speak of their civilization,
government, education or literature? Are we using the terms in the same sense
in which we apply them to our own people and country? The fact that we are
not may be illustrated by a single example (The Sewanee Review November,
1892: 74)

The article continues, tapping into rhetorical imaginations of China as a

“moribund culture” that has stagnated, describing the Chinese as:

Like the wretched invalid who, smitten with a disease which is incurable,
having tried physicians and surgeons innumerable, gives up in despair and asks
this one sole favor of his friends, that they will not disturb him, but allow him
to finish his life in peace. ‘You need not come to us to talk about religion; we
know all about religion; we have listened to moral teachings of every kind for
two thousand years; they are all equally good, and all equally poor,’ is the

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 Chinese greeting to the missionary of to-day. And so, being utterly unable to
appreciate the sacrifice of the Cross, and the life-giving power of a religion
based on faith, he naturally attributes the perseverance of the missionary in his
work, either to political or commercial or even dishonest motives. ‘These men
are spies in the service of the United States Government;’ ‘these men come
here to steal our children and make slaves of our people;’ ‘these men come
here to injure us, to poison us? let us rise and drive them out,’ say the anti-
Christian placards on the city walls. It is exactly what might be expected under
the circumstances’ (The Sewanee Review November, 1892: 79).

The article even engages with the material culture of the Chinese, discussing

how the use and placement of objects within a house accompanies social and religious

changes outside of the house: “Enter the home of the native preacher of the Church;

the very atmosphere is different from that of the heathen home that adjoins it.” (The

Sewanee Review November, 1892: 86). These missionary accounts and travelogues

were widely published in Europe and America and they did a great amount of

ideological and cultural work in building the “grid of intelligibility” through which

China and the Chinese were imagined.

THE POINT ALONES VILLAGE

How did these discourses prefigure non-Chinese descriptions of daily life at

the Point Alones Village? This is a critical question because those descriptions had

political efficacy. They helped to constitute an imagination of the village in the minds

of thousands of individuals who read the Monterey Herald Weekly, or the San Jose

Mercury News, some of who had likely passed by the Chinese fishing village on their

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way to the famous 17-mile-drive or the golf links at Pebble Beach, others who may

have visited the Chinatown during a festival or as part of a “tourist” visit of the area,

and still others who may have only known about the village through the newspaper

accounts themselves. They also helped non-Chinese readers “make sense” of the

stories about the village depicted in magazines such as Harpers, dime novels like

Secret Service, or the travelogues of visitors to Monterey and the Del Monte hotel who

passed by the village and wrote about their experiences. Through these media accounts

and their references to preexisting discursive productions, the Point Alones Village

was made vivid in the imagination of thousands of non-Chinese individuals who may

never have as seen a Chinese individual, much less a resident of the Point Alones

Village. These descriptions and depictions also structured ideas, opinions, and political

debates in Monterey surrounding the Point Alones Village.

THE BRADYS AND PRINCE HI-TI-LI

I begin this discussion with a piece of evidence that I find particularly

compelling - a story written as entertaining fiction for young boys across the United

States. This text engages with many of the discursive tropes that I discuss in this

chapter: danger and pollution, desire and sensual pleasure, receptive assimilation,

antiquity, and conservatism. All of these tropes are present in a fascinating description

of the Chinese in Monterey published on June 15th, 1906, mere weeks before the

Point Alones Village was burned to the ground.

Dime novels were mass-produced, inexpensive, popular-press novels and short

stories that were widely available in the United States during the late 19th and early

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20th centuries. The books entertained working class audiences with tales of adventure,

vice, and mystery (Denning 1987). Common themes included sensationalized

historical adventures that took place in the “Wild West,” the antebellum South, or

during the Revolutionary War. Also common were stories of urban detectives fighting

crime, rags-to-riches tales in the model of Horatio Alger’s stories (who was himself a

publisher of dime novels), and romance stories set in high society that were aimed at

female readers. Dime novels became so popular that at least one late 19th century

observer argued that they represented “the greatest literary movement, in bulk, of the

age and worthy of very serious consideration for itself” (Chilcoat and Gasperak 1984:

100).

Frank Tousey, one of the most prolific publishers of turn-of-the-century dime

novels (Cox 2000), printed a new story from his incredibly successful series “Secret

Service.” If one were to trust the cover, The Bradys and Prince Hi-Ti-Li; or, The Trail

of the Fakir of ‘Frisco was written by “A New York Detective.” In reality, the

pseudonymous author was likely Brooklyn-based novelist Francis Doughty (Cox

2000: 89). The story revolves around the attempt by the “famous” Brady detective

family to locate and return the daughter of a wealthy New York banker. What is

interesting about this short story is that it weaves around narrative that is surprisingly

similar to the “true” cases reported upon in local newspapers that I discuss later in this

chapter. Specifically, this “fiction” in consort with “nonfiction” provides texture for,

and plays off, a common trope of encounter between the Chinese and their non-

Chinese neighbors: the ever-present threat that the Chinese present to the sexual and

moral character of white women.

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 The story begins in New York City where the Brady family, a father and son

detective duo, learns that the daughter of the wealthy Mr. Van Gordon has absconded

to marry a Chinese man, the Prince Hi-Ti-Li identified in the title of the book. As Mr.

Van Gordon tells the detectives, “She became perfectly fascinated with the fellow and

instead of discouraging the wretched business, as she should have done, my wife

encouraged the fellow, because of the enormous wealth he was reputed to possess, and

which was all a myth” (New York Detective 1906: 2-3). After some discussion, Mr.

Van Gordon reveals that his daughter has been sent to San Francisco where “The poor

girl is being used as bait to lure young men into [her husband’s] gambling den” (New

York Detective 1906: 2). The detectives agree to take the case and they quickly pack

their bags for San Francisco. The chapter ends was a narrative aside that reads, “It was

not the first time by several that the Bradys have been called upon to act in similar

cases. There appears to be a horrible fascination about the Chinese for some young

white women” (New York Detective 1906: 2).

In San Francisco, the Bradys manage to track down the Prince and catch him

concocting an elaborate scheme with a corrupted wealthy white woman and a

“hindoo.” Their goal is to marry Mr. Van Gordon’s daughter, Hi-Ti-Li’s wife, to a rich

British “hash fiend” whose “one wish is to get a wife who also uses the drug” (New

York Detective 1906: 19). The Brady family has several adventures in the San

Francisco Chinatown including a trip to a Chinese morgue, a homoerotic hash-fueled

dream sequence, and an encounter with a “half breed” Chinese detective, the only

sympathetic Chinese character in the story. The elder Mr. Brady ends up tracking the

daughter, accompanied by the corrupt white woman, to Monterey where, after a series

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of adventures, he finds her leaving the famous upscale Del Monte Hotel to smoke

hashish in a Chinatown opium den owned by a man named “Wong.” The story ends

with Wong murdering the Prince Hi-Ti-Li in a fit of jealousy over the daughter. Wong

then attempts to murder the daughter and the elder Mr. Brady, before being himself

apprehended by a Monterey detective named Harry. The Bradys finally convince the

daughter to return to New York where “she subsequently became a respectable

member of society…married and is now abroad” (New York Detective 1906: 28).

What primarily interests me here is the ways in which material culture – the

goods and products that archaeologists would ostensibly find if they were to excavate

the Chinatown where the Bradys were almost murdered - are embedded in the text by

the author, are related to the moral failings of the characters, and are conjured-up in

the imagination of the reader. While reading this text, it is readily apparent that the

racial identity of the inhabitants of the Monterey Chinese community are brought “into

existence” and made sense of in terms of the explicit and implicit use of material

culture.

For example, when the Bradys first enter the San Francisco Chinatown, they

are told by a local detective that it “doesn’t change a bit,” it “looks just like when [the

detective] saw it thirty-five years ago” (New York Detective 1906: 4). What “doesn’t

change a bit” are the unpleasant objects and things that are found strewn about the

streets: “Whole hogs smoked and varnished; wonderful cheeses, merely to glance at

which makes one long for wings or an automobile attachment to hasten his

departure…the ‘China market’ in San Francisco is indeed a queer place” (New York

Detective 1906: 4). This paragraph introduces and naturalizes the idea that the Chinese

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are culturally conservative, that, despite thirty years of presence in the United States,

more than a generation, they remain materially foreign and, thus, have yet to

assimilate to the dominant culture. Beyond these examples of strange and foreign

food, the details of this material difference are explicitly passed over. For example in

the Monterey Chinatown, as the elder Mr. Brady spies through the skylight of a

Chinese merchant’s house, he first comes across a room that “was merely a Chinese

opium joint. It was fixed up in the usual style” (New York Detective 1906: 18). He

moves to the next skylight where he sees another room. “This time it was a gambling

den” (New York Detective 1906: 18). The third skylight reveals “exactly what he was

looking for. Peering down he saw a small room elaborately furnished in the Chinese

style” (New York Detective 1906: 18). Later in the story, the Bradys come across

another opium den in the Monterey Chinatown. As they ascend to the room, the

narrator reports that “the room was well furnished in the Chinese style” (New York

Detective 1906: 27). These are interesting statements: “the usual style,” and “the

Chinese style,” repeated twice. With this shorthand, the invitation on the part of the

author for the reader to “fill in” the material details of these locations becomes

explicit. These descriptions highlight the dialogic relationship between author and

reader that requires contingent meaning to be woven in and through material culture.

Though this story, and others like it, were clearly fiction, they were not simply

empty diversions or escapist fantasy. Their distribution and circulation cited, iterated,

and materialized specific tropes of racial identity. These tropes transpose from

newspaper articles that reported “the truth” to fictive accounts of Chinese American

communities and back again with force and vigor. Their continued circulation though

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the 19th century and into the present day, though not without substantial modification,

reveals the extent to which discursive formations sediment contingent arrangements of

bodies and things.

NEWSPAPERS

Local newspapers regularly provided “true” stories about the Chinese, both at

the Point Alones Village and elsewhere. Unlike dime novels or other “fictional”

works, newspapers have a very explicit super-addressee: objective truth. They purport

to report what “actually happened” and inform readers of the narrative events of

reality (just “the facts”). We all realize (and indeed, individuals living in California

during the 19th century realized) this ideal of objective and neutral description is never

achieved, but nonetheless newspaper reports make truth claims that are fundamentally

different from those of fiction, memoir, biography, or legislation.

There were hundreds of newspaper articles written about the Point Alones

Village. Many of these articles took a form similar to two articles published in San

Jose Mercury News that I discuss below. These two articles describe events that

occurred at the Point Alones Village. “A Leper in Monterey” reads a headline on

November 17, 1897. The article continues: “The Chinese of Monterey are excited over

the discovery of a case of leprosy in the local Chinatown. The leper was found by the

Monterey Health Officers. He was removed to the pesthouse.” On March 13, 1899

another head screamed: “Mystery at Monterey.” It continues, “The body of a Chinese

was found apparently anchored under water at Chinatown point yesterday by a

Spanish fisherman. Supposed to be murder. Police are investigating.” Neither of these

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articles discuss the set and setting of the disturbing and dangerous events that occurred

in a real Chinese American community and, though a small handful of the paper’s

readers might have viewed the Point Alones Village out the window of a fast moving

train on a vacation one year, the vast majority of the paper’s non-Chinese readers

would not have the ‘raw substance’ of the village to refer to. In order to fill in the

details of these events, the reader builds stories based on previously experienced

narratives, objects, and ideas. This relationship has been ethnographically documented

by Portelli (1991) who explored how the form and function of newspaper accounts,

accounts that are themselves primarily drawn from oral sources and oral history, shape

how readers, and sometimes even event participants, understand the meanings of the

reported events and how they relate these events to other texts and experiences. In this

particular instance, the newspaper accounts depend on many of the previously

discussed tropes in their citation and exposition of “the news.”

SQUALOR, DANGER, EXOTIC DIFFERENCE

Descriptions of the Point Alones Village that highlighted the exotic permeate

the “true” newspaper accounts of the settlement. In particular, objects and artifacts are

brought to the fore and their qualities are judged. Tropes of squalor and danger

regularly appear, as do tropes of exotic difference.

These tropes can be seen in a travel report published in Springfield Republican

on the August 16, 1894. This report discusses the author’s visit to Pacific Grove and

Monterey. The author describes the Del Monte Hotel, a prominent setting in Tousey’s

dime novel, and expounds upon his trip around the Monterey Peninsula. During the

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voyage, the author passes the “inevitable Chinese fishing hut with shells for sale and

fish and abalones drying in the sun. Their habituations are most squalid and repulsive

and a blot on the landscape, and we pass by them quickly.” Travelogues such as this

were a key source of “true” information about the material characteristics of people

and places. If the East Coast readers of Tousey’s dime novel were familiar with the

Del Monte and the Monterey Chinatown, it was likely through reading these sorts of

stories, stories that selectively highlight and frame material culture.

Another example that places the Point Alones Village into an aesthetic of

squalor comes from Fitch’s 1888 description of the town in Picturesque California, a

book edited by John Muir. In the text, Fitch describes the village as one that is:

Worthy of study by any one who wishes to get a correct idea of the way the
celestial lives when not governed by health boards and the police. The place
consists of a double row of shanties, built directly on the rocky shore, which
here permits good-sized fishing boats to come to anchor at the owner’s back
door. Everything is unspeakably dirty and redolent with the odor of decaying
fish (Fitch 1888: 39).

The author finishes the article by comparing the village to one in China, explaining

how:

When viewed from the water, it is said by those who have traveled in China, to
bear a striking resemblance to the native villages that line the Yangtse, and
other great rivers of the Flowery Kingdom. These Chinese have the Oriental
disregard for the stranger, and calmly pursue all their avocations and though
unobserved. It is seldom that the visitor will not find a group squatting about a
small table in one of these hovels, eating with chop-sticks or wooden spoons

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 from the common dish of fish, rice or unwholesome looking porridge that
forms their staple diet (Fitch 1888: 40).

Not all accounts that highlight exotic difference revolve around these bluntly

“negative” tropes. As with other accounts of China and the Chinese, a competing

discourse that posits the Chinese as quaint, feminne, and antique was read through the

objects and aesthetics at the Point Alones Village. For example, in the June, 1882

article in Harper’s Weekley, W.H. Bishop wrote about the Chinese quarter "along the

beach at this remote point of the great Pacific Ocean," what is almost certainly the

Point Alones Village. He highlights the exotic aesthetic of the village in his account,

describing it as a place that "constitutes a feature of exceeding quaintness and

picturesqueness." The Chinese, he wrties, "paste crimson papers of hieroglyphics on

their shanty residences, burn tapers before their gods, and fish for a living in such

junks and small boats as are seen at Hong-Kong and Canton."

The trope of exotic difference stuck in the minds of residents, though they

often disagreed on the details. For example, in a June, 21, 1950 article in the Monterey

Herald, a reported referred to nostolgic memories of the Point Alones Village, calling

it:

A quaint, if malodorous, replica of many small fishing-villages along the

Yangstze River in China. Crooked paths and roads ran between the rows of
houses perched on wobbly stilts; women and children hobbled slowly on their
cruelly-bound feet, and the Chinese fishermen still wore their pigtails. Colorful
garmets hung from crude clotheslines, and each company of men moored their
boats so close to the shore that they served as front porches.

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 Comparisons between the Chinese American fishing villages and villages in

China did not always stress their similarity. For exmaple, in 1871, the San Francisco

Bulletin compared a Bay Area fishing village to a village in China, leading with a

claim that “The Chinese fishermen in China is a different indivdiual to the Chinese

fisherman of the Pacific Slope and far above him.” The newspaper continues with this

description of the Chinese village: “The hunter who approaches this locality in his

boat, in pursuit of duck in the slough which bounds it on one side, does not find the

strong odor of drying fish a picasant change from the fresh breeze that sweeps up the

main creek. Nor are the surroundings of the cabins an indication of high civilization or

cleanly habits on the part of the occupants.” This first-hand observation of the

Chinese village mirrors the work of many misisonaries who compared favorably the

Chinese in China with those who emigrated to the United States.

Discourses of exotic difference often leaned upon imaginations that the Point

Alones Village maintained direct links to China and, as a result, was a place that was

not wholly terratorialized “in America.” For example, in 1928, one Monterey

Pininsula resident remembered the Point Alones Village as a place where:

In the autumn of every year huge Chinese junks with their great lantern sails,
would arrive from the Orient and anchor in the bay off Chinatown. These junks
would load up with the dried squid and return direct to China. They also
brought a considerable amoint of merchandise for the local Chinese merchants.
Whether or not these junks passed any customs inspection here I cannot say
(The Grove at High Tide, Nov 23, 1928).

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There was great worry among the populace of Monterey that these Chinese boats were

up to nafarious ends, and they were the target of government raids, such as on April 3,

1889 when, in Monterey, “A Chinese junk was seized this morning by Government

officials who suspect it was engaged in smuggling opium.” The fears appear to be

unfounded, however, as “a search was made, but nothing found. The officers had been

watching here for two months” (San Francisco Bulletin, April 4, 1889).

The idea that Chinese spaces in Monterey were “oustide of the law” was

repeated in lurid descriptions of crime and death among Monterey Chinese,

descriptions that often circulated thousands of miles away from Monterey Peninsula.

“California Highbinder War” screams a headline from the January 25, 1895 issue of

the Sioux City Journal. The article continues, describing events in Montrey where “a

quarrel at 8 o’clock this evening over a game of fantan resulted in a bloody street fight

between six Chinese, two of whom, Man Choy and Ah Sing, are mortally wounded.”

The danger of the Chinese was not simply reported upon as a mater of criminality.

Regular descriptions of death and injury in Chinatown or among the Chinese due to

accident or gross disregard for life were presented in local newspapers: On May 20,

1874 the Monterey Herald wrote:

Body Found - On Tuesday the remains of a Chinaman was found washed

ashore west of this town, and on Wednesday Justice Pardee summoned a jury
and proceeded to investigate the matter. Some time ago a fishing boat
containing three Chinamen was capsized and the Celestials were all drowned,
one of the bodies was soon after recovered. The remains found Tuesday were
adjudged to be one of the missing Chinamen and a verdict of ‘accidental
drowning’ was found by the jury.

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A month later, on June 13, the same paper wrote:

Last Sunday a Chinaman at Jim’s wash-house was fixing a Colt’s pistol, and
had some difficulty in getting the cylinder into place. He thought by using a
hammer that the cylinder could be made to fit in its proper place in the pistol
and so he gave it a gentile tap with the aforesaid tool. Dr Wells removed about
fourteen sections of a pistol ball from his forehead and dressed his wounded
hand.

The next month, on July 4, the same newspaper repoted that:

Cork Sam was arraigned before Justice J. A. McCandless on a charge of

assault with intent to commit murder on the person of one Sam Bone, at a
China house on Castroville street, in that place. The evidence was pretty
conclusive that Cork Sam attempted to practice a little surgery on the arm of
Sam Bone without being duly licensed therefore, and he was held to answer
before the next Grand Jury in the sum of $1,000.

Products from the Point Alones Village were also framed in ways that

highlight their dangerous and threatening character, commonly as a threat to White

labor or as a wholesale threat to health and safety, such as when the San Jose Mercury

News on January 1, 1900 reported about a “Narrow Escape from Fatal Fungi.” The

paper expained how:

Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Root, who are among the Grove’s winter visitors, bought
some mushrooms, as they supposed, from a Chinese vegetable peddler, and
shortly after eating them were taken with violent cramps and other
unmistakable symptoms of poisoning [...] The cause of the poisoning is
supposed to be the presence of one or two toadstools among the lot of
mushrooms.

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 While stories about the Chinese in Pacific Grove and Monterey circulated

throught the United States, stories about the Chinese in China and elsewhere in

California circulated in Pacific Grove and Monterey, often reinforcing the themes and

tropes that are localized in articles about the Point Alones Village. For example, two

months after the string of “unfotunate incidents” among the Chinese were reported, on

September 5, 1874, the Monterey Weekley Herald wrote a general article about the

“Chinese” view of death:

The Chinese are almost indifferent to the phenomenon of dissolution, and

frequently compass their own end when life becomes wearisome. A wife
sometimes effects to follow their husband on the starlit road of death; and
parents will destroy their offspring in times of famine and great distress rather
than allow them to suffer. [...] The wholesale destruction of life in this country
is greatly the result of indifference. Hence the massacre of Europeans, so
terrible to us, seems to them a matter of little moment, and they cannot
comprehend why we should make a fuss about it. They regard our indignant
protestations very much as we might treat our neighbor whose dog we had
shot. “Well, well, be pacified; if it was such a favorite, I am sorry; but it is only
a dog, and there are plenty more. How much do you want to be paid for it?

When the local and the global are juxtaposed in such a manner, that manner through

which hegemonic discourses are cited and perpetuated becomes apparent.

A PARTICULAR DANGER TO WOMEN

While the Chinese spaces were viewed as dangerous to Chinese and non-

Chinse individuals alike, this danger was gendered in such a way that these

geographies became particularly threatening for women. This trope often mirrored the

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story presented in the Brady mystery. A local example, though not at Point Alones,

comes from the May 28, 1908 edition of the San Jose Mercury News, carries the

sensationalistic headline: “White Girl Found in Chinatown.” In this article, a white

woman, indeed the daughter-in-law of a prominent dentist, was apparently found in a

San Jose Chinatown “den.” But the story, while outlining a basic narrative, leaves

most of the details to the imagination and fails to fully materialize its setting. We do

not know what the “den” in Chinatown looked like. In fact, we do not even know what

the “den” was. Was it an opium den? A gambling den? One would imagine that it was

not an innocent tea-room or a Chinese restaurant, for that would not be newsworthy.

In the article, we learn that the white woman had in her possession a bank book but we

are not told what she was doing with the bank book. Readers, when faced with these

descriptions, would turn to previous descriptions of “Chinese spaces” in order to

imagine the set and setting of these “terrible deeds” and the unspoken actions which

may have taken place in these dens of inequity.

On March 11, 1899 the San Jose Mercury published the ostensibly true

“romantic story of Quey Young the Murdered Slave Girl.” This article describes

events leading up to the murder of “Quey Young, the Chinese slave girl, who was

enticed away from San Jose and killed in the San Francisco Chinatown.” The girl,

reportedly purchased in China, was sold to a string of different Chinese men in

California, until finally being sold to a kindly merchant who opened a “branch store”

of his business in Monterey. When the kindly merchant left for China in order to

restock his stores and the girl’s appointed guardian left on business to Monterey, she

was stolen by a “highbinder” and murdered in San Francisco.

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 The trope of Chinatown as a threatening place for women continued long after

Point Alones residents were evicted from their homes. In a June 19, 1936 issue of the

Monterey Trader, the author presents “the woman shopper’s angle on Monterey’s

Chinatown.” The article proposes that if you are a woman, “you try to manage to do

your shopping in Monterey in localities where you can walk from store to store along

a sidewalk free from none-too-clean leering loafers.” Merchants, the article suggests,

find that women “will not walk through Monterey’s so-called Chinatown - an

underworld region of blank-faced opaque-windowed, unsanitary and fire-hazardous

old ‘shells’ (as the owner of two of them, T. A. Work, appropriately dubs them).” The

article continues to agitate against Chinatown, suggesting what women do not

patronize non-Chinese automobile showrooms because of their proximity to

Chinatown: “Women customers tell them and have told others that they WLL [sic]

NOT continue to walk thru [sic] Chinatown to come to their garages.” The article

suggests that visiting Chinatown threatens the sexual integrity of women: “Within the

short block she was accosted by two of the city’s privileged vags, one remarking to the

other, ‘She’s one of Flora’s girls.’” The article ends with a call for reform: “The

condition in Monterey would not be tolerated elsewhere. We have a feeling that it will

very shortly change here, for the hand that rocks the cradle also spends the money, as

local merchants are fully aware.”

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JESSIE JULLIET KNOX

These discourses, global in scale and with a significant time depth, but woven

through the Point Alones Village, were not just lurid stories presented by individuals

who were hostile to the Chinese. Indeed, some of the greatest white proponents of

Chinese immigration cited and reiterated these discourses in print. The life and

fictional stories written of Jessie Juliet Knox present an interesting case in this regard.

Her work exemplified how knowledge about the Chinese and Chinese Americans at

the Point Alones Village was created and circulated in reference to preexisting

discursive structures that were modified and given meaning in their specifically

embedded location. In particular, this biography highlights Jessie Juliet Knox’s role as

an “expert” informer whose opinions and descriptions about the Chinese were used

authoritatively. Her poetry and literature, specifically targeted at women and children,

highlights how age and gender were both salient factors in social definitions of racial

identity. Finally, Jessie Juliet Knox was a strong opponent of the anti-Chinese

movement. She maintained friendships with Chinese and Chinese Americans and

wrote compassionately about the Chinese. An analysis of her life and her fiction

provides an opportunity to explain how individuals who were both pro- and anti-

Chinese drew from and spoke to a similarly constituted “grid of intelligibility” that

ultimately defined the limits of multiculturalism and political subjectivity in 19th

century California.

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BIOGRAPHY

Jessie Juliet Knox was born in 1870 in Cleveland, Tennessee (San Francisco

Chronicle Friday, June 14, 1968). Her father was a Methodist minister of some note

and local newspapers referred to hers as a “prominent” family.

At the age of 25, Knox moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where her husband,

Charles W. Knox, worked as a banker, primarily in San Jose. After her move, she

became known as a “prominent social leader and philanthropist” (San Francisco

Chronicle Friday, June 14, 1968).

Her marriage was a rocky one and in 1913 she and her husband divorced, causing

a social scandal and making the newspapers (“Story Writer Given Divorce.” History

San Jose, Knox collection). The grounds for the divorce were apparently that “her

husband ridiculed her and called her names when they attended many exclusive social

functions given by the elite of this city” as well as a claim that her husband was “harsh

and disagreeable” and that he had “prevented her freedom of thought as to religious,

literary, and musical matters”(San Jose Evening News. April 4, 1913). According to

the April 4, 1913 issue of the San Jose Evening News, as a result of the divorce she

was “given $50 a month alimony and $15 a month for the support of the twelve-year-

old daughter of the couple.”

In addition to her “work” as a socialite, Jessie Juliet Knox was an author who

wrote poetry and prose for adults and children. Her writing was published widely and

appeared in magazines including the well-regard Sunset and Overland Monthly. She

wrote at least three books. Two of them Little Almond Blossoms: A Book of Chinese

Stories for Children (1904) and In the House of the Tiger (1911), took as their subject

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quazi-fictional stories of the lives of Chinese American and Chinese immigrant

children.

She adopted a Chinese daughter, Lynne Lee Shew, who later graduated from the

University of California at Berkeley with at B.A. in 1916 and an M.A. in 1917. While

there she wrote a masters thesis titled The Administration of Girls' Normal Schools for

Primary and Secondary Teachers in China. After graduation, Lynne Lee Shew

founded a hospital in “Shek-ki, capital of the Shang Shan district, an agricultural

region of containing about a million inhabitants of Kwangtung” (Chinese Students’

Monthly 1920).

Knox died in 1968 in Palo Alto at the age of 98. Her obituary called her an

“exceptional woman, who, as the saying goes, became a legend in her time” and wrote

that she “is credited with having rescued literally thousands of Chinese girls from

vicious bondage in brothels and cribs” (San Francisco Chronicle Friday, June 14,

1968). Her activism with Chinese immigrants, rather than her literary exploits, was the

primary topic of her obituary and it lauded her for: “Instead of instructing in the

gentile art of playing the needle, she soon was helping to raid opium dens, scurrying

down grimy alleys and scrambling over rooftops. Due to her efforts much of the

misery, squalor and crime was eliminated from Chinatown” (San Francisco Chronicle

Friday, June 14, 1968).

Knox published several fictional stories and poems about Chinese immigrants, and

especially Chinese immigrant children. The stories took place in Chinatowns across

Northern California, including one story that was set at the Point Alones Chinese

Village. In these stories the “exotic difference” of the characters is enunciated through

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reference to action, speech, and material culture. Even though these depictions are not

explicitly hostile to the Chinese, they create the presence of gendered and racialized

bodies and things that are, at best, ambivalently American.

“PIDGIN ENGLISH”

One method through which the exotic difference of the Chinese is emphasized in

Knox’s text is through her use of “pidgin English” (Hall 1944). In her 1904 book

Little Almond Blossoms the Chinese children speak in a “pidgin English” that

emphasizes the foreign accent of these children. For example, in the first story of the

text, “In the Land of the Dragon,” a young Chinese American child serves as the

narrator: “Oh No!” gasped the trembling boy, “I velly much ‘flaid the big dlagon eat

me up.” This kind of linguistic depiction draws from and reiterates at a specific site a

broader discourse of foreign-ness that, like many of these discourses, has a long

history. This linguistic use follows the form of texts such as Charls Godfry Leland’s

Pidgin-English Sing-song, an 1876 book written in England that was composed

entirely in “Pidgin-English” and that “was published in both London and Philadelphia

and reprinted in numerous editions (Bolton 2000: 45). This particular form of

linguistic othering was often extended to Asian Americans more generally, and

regularly appears in film and literature.

FOREIGN SPACES

The English spoken by Jessie Juliet Knox’s Chinese children is an ambivalent

English, a language that approximates “proper” English but that retains its distinctly

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Chinese cast. This ambivalence is reinforced through the set and setting in which she

places her characters. “Chinese” geographies are spaces that are neither wholly

Chinese nor properly American. Indeed, she introduces Chinatown in In the House of

the Tiger as an “upside down place” (Knox 1911: 1). The ambivalent territorialization

of Chinese spaces is also made explicit in Little Almond Blossoms (1904: 163) when

Knox writes “Gum Ching [a young enslaved Chinese girl] lived in America, but she

had no way of knowing it, as she never saw any of the country, and was kept in her

home all the time.” The argument couldn’t be made more starkly: Chinatown is not

America. This theme was highlighted in reviews of the book. The Kansas City Star on

December 18, 1904 wrote that: “[Little Almond Blossoms] tells of the clothes they

wear, the visits they play, the fun they have and introduces sufficient local color to

make little Americans realize that the wee China people are really foreigners, even

though they were born in San Francisco, and will probably live in America for

always.”

POINT ALONES IN KNOX’S TEXT

The Point Alones Village figures prominently as a setting in both of her books

featuring Chinese characters. In these books the village is characterized as a poor

community where the young residents live a life of want and deprivation, opium is

regularly smoked, and young girls are enslaved and forced to work long hours. For

example, in her story “The Little Fisher Maiden” published in Little Almond Blossoms

Knox writes that “Lo Luen was the little daughter of a poor Chinese fisherman, and

lived in the Chinatown of Monterey, California. [...] It was a very poor place, and they

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were very poor people, but lo Luen did not know this, because it was all she had ever

known, so it did not disturb her simple celestial mind in the least” (Knox: 1904: 90)

Although her story “The Maid of Monterey” was published in In the House of the

Tiger in 1911, five years after the Point Alones Village was destroyed, she has as her

setting a “Chinese fishing hamlet in New Monterey” that is clearly modeled after Point

Alones. Indeed, the book includes a photograph of Point Alones alongside the text

[Figure 4.1]. In the book the village is described as a “picturesque but dirty place.”

Like most of Knox’s stories, this revolves around the plight of an enslaved girl who is

abused by the Chinese but who finds freedom when she is taken away by white

missionaries. Indeed, Knox writes that the girl’s life is so difficult that she regularly

contemplates suicide: “Sometimes when she lay awake at night, listening to the boom

of the sullen waves upon the rocks which surrounded her rude abode, she was almost

tempted to slip out and throw herself into the angry water, for then she would not have

to work so hard and to eat her heart out with longing for something better” (Knox

1911: 91). Emphasizing the cruelty of the Chinese, Knox writes that:

The place [the enslaved girl] called home was an interesting spot to an outsider,
but the child was kept so busy baiting the big hooks and nets, beside doing the
housework in the rickety hut, that she had not time to study the interesting part of
it. The only leisure she had was when the boats had come in, and her master had
fallen asleep over his opium pipe. From this slumber it was the duty of the slave to
awaken him in time for the squid fishing at night. She breathed a sigh of relief
when she saw that he was asleep, and she might rest a little (Knox 1911: 92).

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These stories highlight the foreign, illegal, and dangerous objects that were imagined

to be present at the Point Alones Village. Although they were written by an individual

who was sympathetic to the Chinese in California, the materialization of these

discourses through descriptions of the Point Alones Village reinforced the imagination

of the space as dangerous and irredeemably foreign.

RHETORICAL AUTHORITY

Knox’s texts are particularly important because they were widely disseminated

and, though fictional, were take to be authoritative accounts. Her books were reviewed

across the country and were included in school libraries targeting children. As the San

Jose Mercury News explained in a news brief published on Sept 23, 1906:

Jessie Juliet Knox’s Clever Stories of Chinese Children is Adopted by the State
Boards of California, Minnesota and New York City for Supplementary Reading
in the Public Schools.[…] This will make the children all over our broad state
acquainted with the interesting little children whose life in the narrow quarters of
San Francisco’s destroyed Chinatown is so fascinatingly depicted.

Knox’s vivid descriptions, her experience with the “rescue mission” and her relatively

informal style were all given as examples for the authenticity of her writing. Reviews

of the text from across the country often made reference to these facts: “[these stories]

describe very realistically the Chinese home, manner of life and character” claimed the

Dec 16, 1911 issue of the Christian Advocate. “Mrs. Knox gives very interesting

glimpses of the Chinese quarters, and faithfully portrays the Chinese characteristics,

their festivals, dress religions ideas, etc., as only one who has lived so largely among

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them could do” claimed the Dec 2, 1911 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. The

Dec 11, 1911 issue of the Cooking School Magazine of Boston claimed that the book:

consists of connected sketches that give the reader an intimate view into the homes
of the Chinese in various California cities, a vivid picture of how they live - their
reverence for tradition, their tastes, their stolidity at first so difficult to deal with
[…]This kind of Home Missionary work cannot be too highly commended. It
redounds to the superior credit of Christian civilization In the House of the Tiger is
probably the most interesting book the author has yet written.

A sales pamphlet from the book’s publisher advertising In the House of the Tiger sells

the book as being a way for non-Chinese individuals to understand and educate

themselves about Chinese Americans. The pamphlet includes an undated book review

from the Sacramento Bee that describes the text as: “a collection of stories written

with no pretense to literary excellence and yet with a direct, charmingly quaint style

which entertains and imparts information of a side of life not known or understood by

many Americans.” The imputation of “truth” and “authority” to these accounts is not

simply a projection on the part of readers. Knox herself encouraged readings of her

books that took her stories to be “true” descriptions of aesthetics narratives with

“fictionalized” details. For example, a review of the book published in a 1906 issue of

the Springfield Republican includes the following quote from Knox: “I was fortunate

in making friends with them, and thus afforded the opportunity of studying their life

and customs just as they are.”

The neutrality and “objective” character of these texts is realized in Knox’s

descriptions of the “evil” side of Chinatown. Knox generally avoided charges that her

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work was too “political” or supportive of the Chinese because she cast “foreign-

minded” Chinese men as villains in her stories and highlighted the innocence and

naivete of the Chinese ‘victims.’ For example, her work was lauded in a Sunset

Magazine review that explains how “the great compassion and profound love for the

women and children of the Chinese, that run like a thread of gold through the whole

fabric of the book, do not blind the author to the characteristics of the criminals of the

race.” The review continues: “There is no plea for any political economy, no attack

upon, nor defense of any industrial system, no critique of any theology, no aspersion

of any race.”

Because of her authority and the “objective” nature of her work, these books

became key nodes in the circulation of discourses about the Chinese in America. For

example, the New York Times on Dec 8, 1906 wrote that “[Little Almond Blossoms] is

now sought for genuine information in regard to the Chinese colony in San Francisco”

These discourses were not invented from whole cloth. As I have shown, their

“objectivity” only existed insofar as her text cited, circulated, and re-circulated

preexisting discourses of “Chineseness” and “foreigness.”

PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS

Narratives drawn from news and fiction worked in conjunction with thousands

of photographs and drawings of the Point Alones Village and other California Chinese

communities, which highlight the exotic, foreign, and/or dangerous aspects of these

communities. These are drawings such as those contained in Fletcher’s Ten Drawings

in Chinatown (1898). Joyce (2002: 15-16), citing Barthes and Bakhtin, has discussed

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how images such as these, despite being “frozen,” still require that viewer to construct

narratives drawn from their own “previous experience.” The format of this book, an

explicit dialogue between the author and one reader highlights how this bundling

process works. For example, Fletcher, in his commentary on one of Peixotto’s

drawings, wrote that one of the buildings depicted seem to have been previously

occupied by White residents and that they now demonstrate “a loss of virtue that is

proclaimed by the rogue-like patches of red paper on the wall and door-post, that are

always the first announcement of Chinese occupancy” (Fletcher 1898: 3 cited in Lee

1999: 60).

The Point Alones Village was regularly photographed by white tourists and

other visitors. While these photographs and drawings might ask for, and even suggest,

a certain kind of response, they never determine what that response would be. For

example, a photograph of a Chinese woman gathering fish at the Point Alones Village

might have been viewed by a non-Chinese observer in 19th century California as an

example of the polluting foreignness of the Chinese. One travel writer, M. H. Field

described the villagers as “Swarthy women and little children who are tanned as black

as negroes by sun and wind, swarm in squalid cabins, and tumble about in the dust of

the single street” (Field 1902: 42). But other viewers would pick out different themes

and threads from the field of objects and aesthetics presented in the photograph. For

example, one village descendant views the photograph in a favorable light, suggesting

that it depicts a community where everybody “worked hard” and contributed to the

welfare of others in the village.

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 The wide circulation of these images in books, newspapers, and postcards

attests to the global reach of locally embedded forms of discourse. A particularly

emblematic example of this global process of circulation and the move from image to

text and back again can be seen in an etching of a Monterey Chinese village (quite

possibly Point Alones) published in 1876 in a Parisian travel periodical, La Tour du

Monde [Figure 4.2]. This etching accompanied an article describing a British tourist’s

visit to Monterey and his encounters with Chinese individuals (including Tim Wong, a

notable resident of the Point Alones Village). The article was written by the British

traveler (William Hepworth Dixon, who published the account in vol. 2 of his book

White Conquest), but had been translated into French by a different individual. The

sketch presented in [Figure 4.2] was produced by D. Mellart who based his drawing

on a cursory sketch that Dixon had made of the village and his own imagination of

what a “California Chinese village” should look like. The etching accompanies text

that describes the village with colorful language. For example, calling the dwellings

“more like dollhouses has human habitation”

SELF-REPRESENTATION

The residents of the Point Alones Village did not simply accept the casual

application of these discourses onto their community. Just as village residents fought

for their fishing and land rights in court, residents regularly argued for their rights and

created alternate discourses. For example, newspaper reports about the voting habits of

Point Alones residents appeared in local and regional newspapers (Lydon 2008). The

San Francisco Bulletin reported on the topic several times. In 1875, the paper reported

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that “Tim Wong, a Chinese resident of [Monterey], cast a Celestial vote for Phelps on

election day. Tim was born in this State, speaks Spanish and English fluently, and is a

good citizen. We think he must be the first case on record of the kind.” In 1888 the

paper reported on a different Chinese voter: Tuck Lee, “the only Chinese voter in

Monterey county” who, the paper reported, “will cast his first vote in November for

Cleveland and Thurman. Tuck Lee was born in Monterey and follows fishing for a

living. He is bright and can speak English and Spanish.”

The Chinese residents of Monterey also protested many of the racist

exclusionary laws by articulating their local concerns with broader discourses. For

example, on January 28, 1876, the San Francisco Bulletin reported that Tim Wong

“claiming as the armor of his appeal the civil rights law” had written a complaint

about the mistreatment of Chinese passengers on a local steamship. Another example

of Chinese residents of Monterey challenging these discourses, reported upon by the

San Jose Mercury News on Feb. 5, 1911, involves an organized protest of a local

staging of “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery.” The play was a popular and

sensationalistic dramatization of a 1909 murder when a 19 year old White woman was

found dead in a New York City “Chop Suey restaurant. The murder was widely and

salaciously reported upon and it sparked a nationwide panic about miscegenation and

the “dangerous” character of the Chinese” (Lui 2005). The San Francisco Bulletin

article reporting on the Monterey protest was not sympathetic to the Chinese claim and

suggested that the city was beholden to the Chinese due to their civic involvement:

“but for the fact that the Chinese colony here is ever ready to contribute their portion

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toward public enterprise, as well as toward raining money to be used in the local

observance of American holidays, the matter might be more easily adjusted.”

CONCLUSIONS

This emphasis on the foreign, exotic, and dangerous materiality of these

Chinatown sites reinforced narratives of social difference that continue to structure

archaeological encounters with overseas Chinese sites. The expectation that

archaeological site reports of the Chinese will hinge on artifacts associated with the

trans-Pacific trade is so strong that, as McIlrath (2000: 373) has explained,

archaeologists often use the presence of distinct and “exotic” looking Chinese material

culture as “the primary (often the only) indication of Chinese occupation of areas.”

This situation recalls the warning by Butler (1993: 49) that “to invoke matter is to

invoke a sedimented history.” This sedimented history, she argues, should be the

object of inquiry, not the foundation of inquiry.

In the overseas Chinese case, relying on a discourse of exotic difference as the

foundation of inquiry has, as McIlrath (2000) demonstrates, caused archaeologists to

overlook or fail to classify as “Chinese” sites, such as work camps, where the presence

of Chinese and Chinese American individuals can be identified based on other lines of

historical or archaeological evidence. At the site I excavated in Monterey I found a

range of artifacts of both Chinese and non-Chinese manufacture that were not in the

Chinese style, artifacts that can potentially articulate with very different stories than

the stories of exotic difference, squalor, decay, and danger that were made intelligible

by the non-Chinese discursive productions.

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 The archaeological counter-discourses that are made possible by re-arranging

and re-contextualizing objects and artifacts are not signs that the archaeological record

is more “true” or “objective” or even necessarily more “complete” than the discursive

productions identified in the historical record. The newspaper accounts about murder

and leprosy that occurred in the Point Alones Village were likely true. The

photographs of the Chinatown, with some exceptions (Lee 1999), were real

photographs of real places. The fictive stories of Tousey, Knox and their cohort cited

actual places and, occasionally, actual events. Instead, what archaeology provides us

with are the raw materials with which to tell alternative stories. Archaeology allows us

to make claims about the things and bodies that were passed-over in dominant

discourses and to understand the role that forgetting and ignoring plays in discursive

production.

In the next section I turn to that archaeological evidence, describing my

encounters with the material remains of the Point Alones Village.

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 Chapter 5: ARCHAEOLOGY AT POINT ALONES

INTRODUCTION

In previous chapters I discussed how textual performances in 19th century

newspapers attempted to affix specific materializations to categories of identity.

Newspaper accounts, advertisements, poetry, photographs, and fiction were all used to

enact and perpetuate specifically racialized readings of Chinese Americans and

Chinese American material culture. Although these documents provide us with a

thickly textured record of the process of identity-making, they are incomplete.

Before discussing the methods I used to recover the archaeological data I

discuss in the second half of this dissertation, I should briefly explain why I conducted

archaeology at the Point Alones Village. The archaeology was not conducted to

provide a more “local,” “structural,” or “objective” understanding of life at the Point

Alones Village. The materials uncovered were not any more local than the 1906

Monterey Herald account of the fire that burned the Chinese Village to the ground.

Nor are they any less purposively constructed – the potter manufacturing a ceramic

vessel, the consumer purchasing that vessel, the child using that vessel, and the

individual throwing out that vessel all act in ways that are no less capable of

modification or of entering into the conscious mind than the newspaper reporter fitting

her prose into the “proper genre” or the Hollywood costume designer who chooses to

clothe the inhabitants of Chinatown of a serialized film in “Oriental” dress instead of

“Western” dress (Williams and Camp 2007).

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 I conducted archaeology at the Point Alones Village largely because the

objects uncovered during excavation are substantively different from the materials that

are recorded or cited in archival documents and in oral history. The objects recovered

during archaeological excavation follow pathways in their voyage from manufacture

through use and discard that are often quite different than the pathways of objects

described in historical accounts. These objects articulate with social and economic

structures that text occasionally elides and they express genres of practice, production,

and consumption that were not written down but that clearly shaped how most people

lived their lives in the past. The objects recovered by archaeologists are often those

that fall into the background of text – the spaces where the reader must use his her

imagination to “fill in” what remains. Near the beginning of In Small Things

Forgotten, Deetz (1996: 11) explains how “in spite of the richness and diversity of the

human record, there are things we want to know that are not to be discovered from it.

Simple people doing simple things, the normal, everyday routine of life and how

people thought about it.” Deetz’s words poetically capture the sentiment behind the

archaeological excavations I conducted at the Point Alones Village. The process of

archaeology provides those of us living in the present a different and productive

pathway into understanding the process of identity-making in the past.

This chapter outlines the methods through which I recovered those

“background objects” of everyday life. Through the process of excavation I came to

understand the radical transformations in the physical landscape of Point Alones that

occurred during and after the 1906 fire. I came to learn the extent to which the

physical remains of the village were swept away by recent modifications, and I was

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buoyed by the presence of intact features from the Chinese Village – demonstrating

the inability of over a hundred years of active modification of the property to

completely erase the material reminder that this spot was once the site of a large and

thriving community of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans.

The bulk of this chapter outlines the methods and results of excavations at the

site of the Point Alones Village (CA-MNT-104). USGS 7.5’ Series quad maps of the

location of the excavation can be seen in [Figure 5.1] and [Figure 5.2]. A general map

of the Hopkins Marine Station and project location can be seen in [Figure 5.3].

For readers interested in the stratigraphy of individual units and the logic

behind excavation decisions this chapter will be an essential resource. Readers

interested in reconstructing the exact details of the methods and results of the

excavation should also consult the artifact catalog and original field documents which

are on file at Stanford University with the Archaeology Center Collections. Before

delving into detail about these methods and results, I briefly outline the essential

information about the excavation and the various depositional periods that I was able

to reconstruct, providing the reader with the information necessary to understand the

depositional context of the objects and artifacts analyzed in the following chapters.

SYNTHESIS OF RESEARCH FINDINGS

This section provides a brief synthesis of the research findings detailed in this

chapter. It discusses the key findings relating to the Chinese occupation of the site and

provides an overview of the archaeological contexts that have integrity and are related

to the Chinese occupation of the site.

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EXCAVATION SCHEDULE

Preliminary survey work at CA-MNT-105 was conducted in November, 2006.

The bulk of the material recovered from the Point Alones Village was excavated

during our primary field season in June, July, and August 2007.

EXCAVATION RESULTS

Broadly, the areas excavated are divided into five different “priority areas”

using a logic described later in the chapter. Their location at the site can be seen in

[Figure 5.4]. Excavation units were placed in locations detailed in [Figure 5.5] and

[Figure 5.6]. The key findings from each area relating to the Chinese occupation of the

site are as follows:

PRIORITY AREA 1

Archaeological excavations in this area revealed that soils had been

extensively disturbed after the Chinese occupation of the site. Fill, likely brought from

elsewhere at CA-MNT-104, was placed directly atop bedrock and intact

archaeological remains from the Point Alones Chinese village were not present. It is

possible that grading and the removal of artifacts and features associated with the

Chinese occupation of the site did not expand throughout this entire area and the

discovery of intact features in this area in the future remains a possibility.

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PRIORITY AREA 2

Archaeological excavations in this area revealed a number of interesting

features associated with the Marine Station and Boatworks Periods of site occupation.

Every unit excavated in this area also contained intact features associated with the

Chinese occupation of the site. These features are primarily trash lenses and middens

that do not seem to be associated with a single activity or household. The soils

associated with the Chinese occupation show evidence of burning, though it is not

known if this was a result of one of the many fires that affected the village or if it was

a result of trash incineration or cooking. No architectural features were uncovered and

it is not know if any remain in situ. The bulk of the artifacts analyzed in the following

chapters of this dissertation came from this area of the site.

PRIORITY AREA 3

Archaeological excavations in this area uncovered soils associated with the

Marine Station and Boatworks Periods of site occupation but did not reveal soils

associated with the Chinese occupation of the site. Excavations suggest that fill was

brought to this area after the Chinese occupation and that features associated with the

Chinese occupation were destroyed during this process. As with priority area 1, it is

possible that grading and the removal of artifacts and features associated with the

Chinese occupation of the site did not expand throughout this entire area and the

discovery of intact features in this area in the future remains a possibility.

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PRIORITY AREA 4

The excavation in this area did not uncover intact features associated with the

Chinese occupation of the site. Excavations suggest that fill was brought to this area

after the Chinese occupation and that features associated with the Chinese village were

destroyed during this process. As with priority area 1, it is possible that grading and

the removal of artifacts and features associated with the Chinese occupation of the site

did not expand throughout this entire area and the discovery of intact features in this

area in the future remains a possibility.

UNDER THE BOATWORKS BUILDING

Archaeological excavations in this area uncovered strata from an ambiguous

series of occupational periods. Chinese artifacts that seemed to represent intact

deposits were found in this area, but it is possible that those artifacts were brought to

these units through bioturbation. The units excavated in this area were small, 50cm X

50cm, and safety concerns constrained further excavation in this area. It is quite likely

that intact features from the Chinese occupation of the site remain in this area. The

artifacts recovered from these units are small in number and do not constitute a

significant percentage of the excavated assemblage.

SUMMARY

Of the excavated areas, only “priority area 2” contained intact features that

were clearly and unambiguously associated with the Chinese occupation of the site.

These features appear to be unorganized trash deposits associated with the latter

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occupation of the village (1870-1906). The presence of deposits throughout the area

implies that intact features associated with the village remain in situ. While the

archaeological information gained through the excavation of these features cannot be

directly associated with individual households, buildings, or historically known

individuals, the results of these excavations provide an important resource for

unraveling the history of the Point Alones Village and open a window into the kinds

of objects that were circulating in the village during the late 19th century.

The next section details the rationale and methods behind the archaeological

excavations at CA-MNT-104. In this section I discuss preliminary survey work, I

explore the research design for my excavations, and I detail the results of those

excavations.

SURVEY

Preliminary on-site archaeological research at the Hopkins Marine Station was

conducted several months prior to excavation. The purpose of this preliminary

research was fourfold:

1. To develop and implement a methodology for mapping features at the site.

2. To use historical data including maps, photographs, and oral history to identify

locations of the site that may contain intact archaeological remains.

3. To develop and implement a testing regime to identify and locate the presence

of intact archaeological remains from the Chinese occupation.

4. To develop a plan for further archaeological testing and excavation if

promising results were found during preliminary research

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MAPPING PROCEDURES

In order to provide a consistent methodology for recording provenience

information, a project datum and grid system were established. Understanding this

grid system will make interpreting project coordinates, maps, excavation procedures,

and other information contained in the appendices much easier. This section discusses

how the grid system was implemented and how provenience information was

recorded.

The project datum (“1” – in field notes) was located in an area with a large view-

shed away from foot traffic and other activities. The location was cleared of brush and

a 10-inch long metal spike was driven into the ground to serve as a temporary datum

marker. The datum has been anchored to both relative measurements (directly

measured from multiple permanent and semi-permanent objects) and an absolute

measurement (UTM N0598027 E4053239). After the datum was established a grid

system with a “project North-South” axis was created. To facilitate accurate

measurements and easy integration of our geospatial data with pre-existing CAD

basemaps, a “project North” was established roughly parallel to the alignment of the

shoreline. This ‘project North” deviates from true north. While benchmark (3) is +74m

North; +27m East from the datum in the arbitrary grid system, it is -27N; -29 E from

the datum in respect to true North. We placed our project datum along this arbitrary

axis and gave the point an arbitrary location of 1,000 meters North (N), 1,000 meters

South (S), and 100M Elevation (Z). These numbers were assigned to ensure that all

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locations recorded at the site would be positive numbers – the “0” location does not

correspond to a geographically significant point on the landscape.

As the project progressed we established numerous primary benchmarks [Figure

5.7]. These benchmarks were established in order to extend the total station viewshed

and provide known and consistent points for checking the accuracy of total station

measurements. A 10-inch long metal spike was driven into the ground at the location

of each of these primary benchmarks. The project datum and primary benchmarks

were placed in the following locations:

1. Datum (1) N: 1,000.00; E: 1,000.00; Z: 100.00

2. Backsight (ø) N: 1,074.52; E: 1027.100; Z: 99.34

3. Benchmark (3): N: 1074.52; E: 1027.10; Z: 98.95

Additionally, the following secondary benchmarks were occasionally used when

foliage or structures obscured the sight lines from the primary benchmarks to the

measured location.

1. Benchmark (2): N: 1,34.18; E: 948.66; Z: 100.77

2. Benchmark (4): N: 1033.51; E: 974.49; Z: 100.41

3. Benchmark (5): N: 1153.82; E: 1044.10; Z: 99.51

MAPPING EQUIPMENT AND PROCEDURES

All absolute geographic measurements were taken with a Pentex R-325 total

station and a 1.5m prism pole. Most points were taken with the total station located

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directly above the project datum (1). When points could not be seen from the project

datum (1) they would be taken with the total station located directly above the nearest

benchmark (2-5). With the exception of a few points taken to check the accuracy of

the datum and benchmarks, points were not taken with the total station located above

the backsight.

Most information gathered during survey was stored in the total station computer

and was additionally written by hand in mapping log books. Additional descriptive

data was also written in the mapping log books.

SURVEY METHODOLOGY

Survey methodologies during excavation focused on locating intact deposits

associated with the Point Alones Village. The original research design called for first

locating and identifying any extant deposits from an area of the village where

historical documents and photographs suggested that a specific individual (Tuck Lee)

and his family had lived. After archeological remains associated with Tuck Lee’s

house were either located or found to be absent, I planned to locate and excavate an

area of the village that was densely populated and rumored to house primarily

“bachelors.” In most archaeological surveys, the first priority is the discovery of

artifacts, features, and sites that will reveal information to help answer the

archaeological research questions (Schiffer et al. 1978). When attempting to locate

archaeological deposits associated with a known family or community, historical

archaeologists have access to robust lines of evidence that can productively influence

survey decisions. Additionally, property lines, the known post-depositional history of

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the site, and extensive development that has occurred after the 1906 fire constrained

the areas of the site where survey and excavation were feasible, productive, or legally

permissible.

IDENTIFYING THE LIMITS OF THE SITE

Historical records including photographs and maps demonstrate that the point

Alones Village included multiple activity areas that were widely spread across the area

between Point Alones and Point Almejes on the Monterey coast [see Figure 5.8 and

5.9). These areas included the residential, commercial, and social buildings that were

clustered together along the shoreline as well as workspaces such as squid drying

racks, shell processing sites, boat storage and launching sites, and a few scattered

buildings of unknown purpose that were located in both the “core” area of the village

and in more “peripheral” areas. A cemetery of indeterminate size, used by the village

residents, was located a short distance away from other structures. Additionally, the

village was not confined to one side of the Southern Pacific Railway lines (the

historical Southern Pacific right of way has been turned into a city-owned “recreation

trail” and is labeled as such on [Figure 5.3]). Multiple houses, workspaces, and social

buildings, including the village temple, were built across the tracks from the “core”

area of the village.

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POTENTIAL POINT ALONES DEPOSITS LOCATED OUTSIDE OF HOPKINS

MARINE STATION

Although historical records clearly document that Point Alones Village

residents built and used structures and inhabited spaces outside of the area currently

owned and managed by the Hopkins Marine Station, extensive urban development and

complex land use issues foreclosed upon the possibility of archaeological investigation

of these features as part of this project. There are three primary locations where extant

deposits may exist but that were located outside of the project area for this excavation:

1. The area of land located directly across the Southern Pacific Railway lines now

contains a large indoor shopping mall, the “American Tin Cannery.” This mall

is itself a reused industrial cannery that was built on the site in 1927. The

footprint of the shopping mall and the two-lane road and sidewalks separating

the Cannery from the Hopkins Marine Station covers the area of the village

where the temple and several other structures once stood. It is possible that the

construction and subsequent modifications of this building did not destroy all

in situ archaeological remains from the Point Alones Village. It is also possible

that in situ remains exist underneath the road and sidewalk fronting the mall or

the walking and bicycle path that was once the Southern Pacific right of way.

Despite this archaeological potential, these areas are currently inaccessible

2. A second area where archaeological remains from the Point Alones Village

may exist but that was excluded from this research project is the land currently

owned and occupied by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Historical records

suggest that the core area of the Point Alones Village only occupied a small

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 part of the Aquarium land. The area of the Point Alones Village that was on

land that is currently owned by the Monterey Bay Aquarium is underneath the

footprint of the Hovden Cannery building (the main aquarium building, built as

an industrial cannery in 1916) and/or underneath the employee parking and

loading lot directly adjacent to the Hovden Cannery. Historical maps and

photographs indicate that this area is not likely to have contained many

structures during the latter years of the Chinese occupation of the areas but it

could have been occupied by village residents during the earlier years of the

Point Alones Village. This area, as well as additional property near the

aquarium, was probably used in an ad-hoc fashion for fish processing, shell

processing, and other commercial and industrial uses.

3. A third possible location for intact archaeological remains is in the tidal zone

and underneath the water off the coast of the Hopkins Marine Station and the

Hovden Cannery (Monterey Bary Aquarium). Family stories from individuals

whose ancestors lived at the Point Alones Village have pointed to a location

underneath the wharf of the Hoveden cannery (Point Alones itself, the rocky

outcropping from where the village receives its contemporary name) as the

location where the ocean-going junk used by the first village residents to cross

the Pacific from China was abandoned and eventually buried by the ocean.

PREVIOUS EXCAVATIONS IN THESE AREAS

Although excavations have occurred on land owned by the Monterey Bay

Aquarium, few archaeological remains from the Chinese period have been positively

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identified. The Environmental Impact Report for the conversion of the Hovden

Cannery into the Monterey Bay Aquarium reports that no archaeological remains were

disturbed. When the Aquarium built a loading and employee parking lot adjacent to

the Hovden cannery they commissioned an archaeological resource management firm

(Archaeological Resource Services [ARS]) to conduct archaeological monitoring.

ARS found a highly disturbed subsurface. During their test excavations, they

uncovered several areas that included concentrations of Chinese artifacts. ARS

suggested that these concentrations were not intact features from the Chinese

occupation but were instead deposited after 1906, possibly though the movement of

fill. This archaeological evidence suggests that it is possible that intact archaeological

remains from the Chinese occupation of Point Alones remain underneath the Hovden

cannery building or on other lands currently owned and operated by the Monterey Bay

Aquarium.

IDENTIFYING SURVEY LOCATIONS AT THE HOPKINS MARINE STATION

The core of the Chinese Village including the areas where most on-site activity

took place was located on property that is currently owned by the Hopkins Marine

Station. This land includes the former location of most of the architectural features

from the village, including the majority of architectural features related to residential,

commercial, fish processing, and social uses. Furthermore, a large portion of the

Hopkins Marine Station consists of undeveloped open land, suggesting the possibility

for minimal ground disturbance in some areas and making archaeological excavations

a viable option.

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 Multiple lines of historic and archaeological evidence were employed in order

to identify locations within the bounds of the Hopkins Marine Station where intact

Chinese deposits were likely to have been located. These lines of evidence included:

1. Historical photographs from the Bancroft Library, the Monterey Public

Library, the Hopkins Marine Station, and from secondary sources such as

Chinese Gold (Lydon 1985).

2. Historical documents from the Pebble Beach Company and from the Stanford

University Special Collections.

3. Discussions and interviews with employees of the Hopkins Marine Station.

4. Previous archaeological reports that had been conducted at the site of the

Hopkins Marine Station and at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS

Historical photographs have multiple uses for historical archaeologists. Aside

from their value as primary-source historical evidence, they are useful for accurately

locating and identifying historical sites and for observing changes in the landscape

over time. Historical photographs can tell the archaeologist information about the

natural and cultural modification of geological features such as the historic location of

the shoreline or the placement of topographic features that have since been leveled.

Historical photographs can all provide information about the location of artifacts such

as houses and other structures and their relationship to other features on the landscape.

As discussed in Chapter 4, the Point Alones Village was often made the

subject of non-Chinese photographers. The exotic picturesque aesthetic that many

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non-Chinese ascribed to Chinatowns made these places “part alluring, part repulsive”

(Lee 2001: 19) and positioned them as perfect subjects for souvenir photography.

Likewise, the inclusion of the Point Alones Village in tourist literature printed by the

Pacific Improvement Company and its location alongside a Southern Pacific line made

it easily accessible to non-Chinese tourists and other potential photographers.

Historical archaeologists have long used historical photographs to locate where

architectural features existed on the landscape and, thus, where subsurface deposits

associated with those features may remain in situ. In particular, Prince (1988) has

developed a methodology for aligning historical photographs with contemporary

landscapes. The method involves mounting a slide of an historical image to the

viewfinder of a camera, locating natural or architectural features in the historical

photograph that remain on the landscape, and sighting those features with the camera.

If conducted properly, the location of historical features on the landscape should be

readily apparent. We adopted this method to digitized photographs by downloading

historical photographs to a digital camera and comparing the downloaded historical

image with the image in the viewfinder. Using this technique we were able to identify

the potential locations of several structures including the house owned by Tuck Lee

and areas destroyed by the 1906 fire [Figure 5.10].

HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS

Historical documents were also used to identify locations at the Hopkins

Marine Station where intact subsurface deposits might be located. These documents

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included information found in the Stanford University Library Special Collections and

an invaluable historical map owned by the Pebble Beach company.

Information from the Stanford University Library Special Collections indicated

that the land currently owned by the Hopkins Marine Station had been cleaned and

cleared of debris following the 1906 fire that destroyed the Chinese village and

multiple documents refer to the expense of cleaning up the site (Pacific Improvement

Company Records, 1906). When part of the property was leased to the Monterey Boat

Building Company in 1918, the Pacific Improvement Company included a

requirement to “keep said premises in a neat and sanitary condition at all times so that

said premises shall not at any time become unhealthy or unsightly by reason of the

collection of rubbish, debris or junk about the premises” (Proposal to Steele, Engles,

and Fulton. Pacific Improvement Company Records, 1918) This clause was likely

inserted into the rental agreement in response to neighboring resident’s complaints

about the condition of the Chinese Village (Lydon 1985). This evidence suggests that

materials found on the surface during pedestrian survey would not be the result of

original depositional activity but would instead be the results of post depositional

activity such as bioturbation, construction-related activities including leveling and

trenching, or erosion.

The Pebble Beach Company, founded by a former employee of the Pacific

Improvement Company, owns and operates many of the properties that were once part

of the Pacific Improvement Company’s landholdings, including the famed Pebble

Beach Golf Course and the associated 17-Mile-Drive. The company maintains a small

corporate archive that contains historical documents and photographs, primarily

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associated with the history and development of the lands currently owned and

operated by the Pebble Beach Company.

One of these documents is a map created by the Pacific Improvement

Company in the aftermath of the 1906 fire that destroyed the Point Alones Village

[Figures 5.8 and 5.9]. This map appears to have been surveyed professionally and

contains precise measurements from benchmarks (many of which, unfortunately, no

longer exist). The map includes sketch outlines of the buildings that survived the 1906

fire. The size and location of these buildings and attached architectural features

(fences and yards) are plotted on the map. Accompanying the outlines of these

buildings is basic information relating to the purpose and/or the name of the building

owner/occupants (as detailed in Chapter 3, the legal status of the Chinese land claims

was yet unresolved when this map was created. The Chinese who had been burned out

of their homes claimed ownership of the property, the Pacific Improvement Company

disputed these claims and ultimately prevailed in court). It also outlines areas that

were burned during the fire, though the geographic footprints of individual burned

buildings are not delimited. The map also records large geographic features such as

rocks, fence-lines, and the Southern Pacific Railway right of way. This information

has allowed us to overlay the map onto aerial photographs and locate the features that

are depicted on the map. This map has proven invaluable and was the most critical

piece of historical data used to determine areas at the Hopkins Marine Station for

pedestrian survey, shovel testing, and eventual excavation.

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DISCUSSIONS AND INTERVIEWS

Discussions and interviews with multiple individuals also informed decisions

about survey locations. Discussions with several employees of the Hopkins Marine

Station revealed areas of the site where “Chinese looking” artifacts were commonly

seen on the surface or eroding from the shoreline. Discussions with Marine Station

employees and archaeologists also revealed areas of the site where mixed subsurface

deposits were located. For example, one Marine Station employee recalled a location

uncovered during construction where a jumble of Chinese looking artifacts were found

in context with artifacts that appeared to come from the boatworks period and

contemporary bottles and cans.

PREVIOUS ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDIES AT CA-MNT-104

Previous archaeological research at the Hopkins Marine Station was primarily

compliance driven. Winter (1977) outlined the results of trenching near the boatworks

building, detailing the presence of Chinese artifacts in midden layers. In May 1977

ARS (Roop 1977) conducted archaeological testing near the boatworks building,

excavating a series of six-inch auger bores and a 1 X 1 meter unit [Figure 5.11]. Their

excavations uncovered “a mixed assortment of artifacts, including a granite fishnet

sinker (presumably prehistoric), a granite pestle (prehistoric), square and round nails,

ceramics which vary from 19th century Chinese rice bowls to mid-1977 ‘construction

worker’ coffee cups, and many other less well-defined items” (Roop 1977: 3).

Because ARS determined that the “artifacts do not exhibit an orderly progression of

strata” (Roop 1977: 3) but instead contain artifacts from multiple occupations of the

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site, they suggested that the soil in the excavated area consisted of fill material that

was “most probably scraped up from the surrounding area” (Roop 1977: 3). While

they concluded that the area excavated was disturbed, ARS suggested that intact

features from the Point Alones Village might be present elsewhere on the site. In

1984, Breschini and Hampson wrote a report detailing archaeological monitoring in

consort with a “seawater improvement project.” This report corroborated the findings

of previous studies. Through auguring they uncovered what they identified as “an

intact layer relating to the Chinese occupation at a depth of approximately 60 to 160

cm” and write that they “suspect that any excavation below approximately 60 cm will

have a high probability of encountering intact deposits relating to the Chinese

occupation of the area” (Breschini and Hampson 1984: 3). No further testing was done

in association with this project. Discussions with Dr. Laura Jones, the Stanford

University campus archaeologist, and employees of the Hopkins Marine Station

revealed that limited archaeological excavations on the shoreline that occurred near

the feature known as “monkey rock” did not reveal intact Chinese or Native American

deposits. Additionally, archaeological excavations near the “Aggasiz” building

revealed evidence of early Marine Station use, including a complete articulated sea

mammal skeleton that was presumably intentionally deposited as a scientific or

pedagogical exercise. According to these sources, excavations near the “Fischer”

building revealed a layer of fill that clearly post-dated the Chinese occupation of the

site and that was probably brought from outside of the immediate area.

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SURFACE SURVEY

Three individuals participated in the surface survey: myself, Mike Knozak

(M.A.), a professional archaeologist, and Gerry Low-Sabado, a descendant of Point

Alones Village residents.

Preliminary pedestrian survey was concentrated in areas where previous

research and historical evidence had indicated that Chinese deposits would likely be

found and where archaeological excavation, if warranted, could be carried out.

Following Schiffer et al. (1978), the survey area was divided into zones of differing

visibility, this division resulted in four primary survey areas (these areas overlapped

with the “priority areas” detailed in Figure 5.2). These non-arbitrary units were

surveyed in “northerly” transects spaced 2 meters apart. Artifacts found on the surface

were recorded with a pin-flag. After each zone had been surveyed, uncovered artifacts

were collected, the location of the artifacts were recorded in the total station, and a

sequential “point provenience number” was assigned to each individual artifact. In

areas around the boatworks building (Survey Area 1) artifacts were so concentrated

that recording individual artifact locations on the total station was not time effective.

Instead, we designated certain areas with a high number of artifacts as “clusters.” The

boundaries of these areas were mapped on the total station and the artifacts within

were given individual point provenience numbers and collected in the same manner as

artifacts located outside of these clusters. After artifacts had been assigned a point

provenience number they were collected and stored. After the conclusion of

preliminary on-site field research artifacts were taken to a laboratory at Stanford

University where they were cleaned and cataloged.

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SURFACE SURVEY RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS

The surface survey produced general information that was used in selecting

areas of the site for test excavation and auger sampling.

First, the area by the boatworks building (Survey Area 1) produced copious

artifacts from the Hopkins Marine Station occupation, the Monterey Boatworks

occupation, and from the Chinese occupation (179 out of 207 total collected artifacts).

Furthermore, visual inspection of the eroding shoreline at the edge of this survey area

revealed artifacts from the Monterey Boatworks occupation and the Chinese

occupation separated by what appeared to be a layer of charred soil. The purpose of

preliminary fieldwork was to identify locations where summer excavation during the

full field season would be potentially productive. It was determined that the surface

evidence combined with the stratigraphic evidence from the eroded shoreline, and the

results of the 1977 ARS excavation was sufficient evidence to warrant further

investigation during the full field season in the coming summer. Our attention for the

remainder of the field season was turned to areas of the site with less promising

surface survey results.

Upon initial on site review of data collected during pedestrian survey, survey

areas 2, 3, and 4 revealed a very small number of artifacts from the Hopkins Marine

Station, the Monterey Boatworks, and Chinese occupations of the site. Although there

appeared to be concentration of artifacts, primarily along the shoreline in survey area

2, none of these concentrations appeared significant at the time. Despite the paucity of

surface artifacts the decision was made to conduct subsurface testing in areas 2, 3, and

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4. This decision was based upon the evidence from historical maps and photographs

indicating that these areas were part of the village as well as discussions with Marine

Station employees who had witnessed artifacts from the Chinese occupation eroding

from the shoreline of surface areas 2 and 4. Because of this artifacts distribution, the

decision was made to conduct subsurface testing in areas 2 and3. If time allowed, we

would continue with area 4.

TEST EXCAVATION: SURVEY AREA 3

When conducing the pedestrian survey of area 1, members of the crew noticed

that grass was growing particularly vigorously in a series of straight, parallel lines

across the field possibly indicating the presence of a subsurface feature such as a wall

or a fence. When designating a transect for test excavation our units were aligned so

that two of them would intersect the grass lines. A total of 5 shovel-test units were

placed in survey area 3. All 5 units were placed along a North-South transect. 3 of

these units were placed at 10 meter intervals. After these three units had been

excavated and it became clear that their soil composition precluded deep hand-

excavation, we placed the next units at 20 meter intervals with the hope of more

quickly locating soils that could be effectively excavated. All shovel test units were

50cm X 50cm and were excavated with shovels, hand trawls, and hand picks. Our

crew consisted of a both professional archaeologists and descendants of Point Alones

Village residents. Excavated soil was screened using a 1/4 inch mesh screen and

uncovered artifacts were bagged by level and material type. At the end of each day,

the artifacts were brought back to the dig house. At the end of the field season, the

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artifacts were brought back to our laboratory at Stanford University where they were

cleaned and cataloged. Excavation level records were completed on site. These records

are versions of level record sheets used in multiple prior California historical

archaeology field projects that have been modified for use in this project. The test

excavations revealed the following information:

TEST PIT 1 (TP1)

TP1 was located at coordinates N1009.59; E961.45 (all unit measurements

were taken from the SW corner of the unit). It was excavated in a single layer to a

depth of 14cm. At 14cm we reached a layer of very hard sand. Shovels and hand picks

were ineffective at that depth. No cultural material was found in this unit.

TEST PIT 2 (TP2)

TP2 was located at coordinates N1019.36; E959.21. It was excavated to a

depth of 13cm. At 13cm we reached the same layer of very hard sand found in TP1.

Shovels and hand picks were ineffective at that depth. After excavation an attempt was

made to break through this hard sterile soil with a bucket auger, but we were unable to

make progress. No cultural material was found in this unit.

TEST PIT 3 (TP3)

TP3 was located at coordinates N1029.13; E956.95. It was excavated to a

depth of 10cm. The profile and soil characteristics of TP3 were similar to TP1 and

TP2. No cultural material was found in this unit.

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TEST PIT 4 (TP4)

TP 4 was located at coordinates N1048.72; E952.49. It was excavated to a

depth of 33cm. Additionally, after excavation with hand-tools was complete, a 1/4

inch bucket auger was used to further excavate at this point to a depth of 54cm below

surface. Although the topsoil of this area was similar to the soil present in prior test

units, it was superimposed over a layer of sand that was not as hard and impenetrable

as the sandy soil located in prior test units.

At a depth of 15cm inclusions of roots and fragmented wood increased.

Between approximately 15cm and 26cm below the surface these inclusions were

accompanied by an assortment of cultural material including abalone shell, multiple

glass fragments, wood, and ferrous metal. A diagnostic Chinese artifact (a lip fragment

from a storage jar) was found during screening at a depth of approximately 20cm. The

concentration of wood located in this unit was roughly aligned in a “Northerly”

direction.

Below a depth of 26cm, the sandy soil became harder and finer. Inclusions and

cultural material were not present in this layer. At a depth of 30cm the decision was

made to use a bucket auger in an attempt to discover the depth of this sterile layer. The

auger was used to excavate to a depth of 54cm at which point the soil became too hard

to continue. Between a depth of 30cm and 54cm the auger revealed a hard sandy soil,

gradually increasing in harness that similar to the soil encountered in TP1, TP2, and

TP3.

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TEST PIT 5 (TP5)

TP5 was located at coordinates N 1068.171; E 948.016. It was excavated to a

depth of 30cm. The soil at a depth of 0-25cm was quite unlike the soils located in

other test units. While the soils in TP units 1-4 were sandy, the soil in TP5 contained

considerably more silt. Inclusions such as rocks, roots, and hard clays were common

throughout the 0-30 cm level. At a depth of between 5cm and 15cm we recovered

cultural material including shell, rope, and several fragments of modern glass.

At a depth of 25cm we encountered an intact PVC pipe located in the west

sidewall. This PVC pipe appeared to be of recent origin, associated with the Marine

Station occupation. We were informed by a member of the Hopkins Marine Station

maintenance crew that the pipe likely carried water and was no longer in active use.

He informed us that it was at least several years old but that, despite not appearing on

utility maps, it was certainly from the Marine Station occupation. The presence of the

PVC pipe accounts for the abnormal strata, clearly post depositional fill, superimposed

above this artifact.

Below the PVC pipe the soil profile was similar to that found in other units and

excavation beyond 30cm was made impossible by the hard, compact sandy soil.

SHOVEL TEST PIT RESULTS

These excavations revealed important information about the soil profile of this

area of the site and the distribution of artifacts across the landscape. Five points are

particularly relevant for this project:

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 1. The abnormal lines of vegetation growing on the surface were not indicative of

subsurface features located at a depth above 30cm below the surface.

2. The concentration of artifacts along this transect was much sparser than the

concentration of artifacts located in the “boatworks” area.

3. At a depth of between 15cm and 54cm the soil becomes too hard to excavate

with hand tools or auger with a bucket auger.

4. One test unit (TP4) revealed a deposit that included a diagnostic Chinese

artifact that may be associated with a larger Chinese deposit.

5. The presence of an intact PVC pipe at a depth of 25cm demonstrates that

recent and unrecorded modern inclusions are present in some areas of the site.

Given time constraints, our mechanical limitations, and the need to explore other areas

of the site, the decision was made to move to survey area 2 without further exploring

survey area 3. More extensive excavation of survey area 3 was determined to be a

moderate-to-low priority for future research.

TEST EXCAVATION: SURVEY AREA 2

The pedestrian survey of area 2 resulted in a collection of artifacts at rates

simliar to those found in survey area 3. Because of this similarity and our time

constraints the decision was made to test survey area 2 with a 2 inch bucket auger. A

total of four auger cores were placed in this area. The locations of these auger cores

were judgmentally selected based on accessibility and correspondance to the locations

216
of historically known structures. Two cores were placed adjacent to the shoreline and

two were placed farther inland.

The auger cores were excavated in approximately 5cm intervals. Soil from the

bucket auger was placed directly onto a 1/4 inch screen and was sifted. All artifacts

recovered from the excavation were bagged, labeled, and taken to our "dig house."

After the preliminary field season was complete, the artifacts were taken to our

laboratory at Stanford University where they were cleaned, cataloged, and analyzed.

Auger core records were completed for each auger. Strata was recorded in natural

strata, i.e. changes in soil composition were recorded as separate strata. Our forms

were a modified version of auger core forms that have been used in other

archaeological excavations of 19th century California sites.

AUGER CORE 1

Auger core 1 was located at N1011.89; E992.76. It was excavated to a depth of

50cm at which point the compactness and hardness of the soil made further auger

coring impossible. The soil represented a single depositional strata: a medium-fine

graned sand. Inclusions of grass roots and chipped bark were found in the upper 20cm

of the core. No cultural material was found in the core.

AUGER CORE 2

Auger core 2 was located at N1038.86; E982.65. It was excavated to a depth of

65cm at which point the soil became wet, waterlogged, and too difficult to auger

through. The soil represented three distinct strata:

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 1. To a depth of 0-18cm we encountered a hard, compact sand. This sandy layer

was dry and highly friable. Inclusions of large stone pebbles were common in

this strata. No cultural material was recovered from this strata.

2. At a depth of 18-60cm we encountered a less compact sandy layer. This layer

was also dry and highly friability, although moisture content slowly increased

with depth. Inclusions of roots were common in this strata. A fairly extensive

amount of cultural material was recovered from this strata. A shard of

diagnostic Chinese utility ware was recovered from a depth of between 18 and

23cm. At a depth of 30 to 50cm numerous artifacts were recovered including

wire nails, fragments of wood, a fragment of colorless flat glass, fragments of

ferrous metal, and fragments of copper metal.

3. At a depth of 60-65cm we encountered a layer of sandy clay. This layer was

quite damp. Moisture content increased with depth and was very wet at 65cm.

No inclusions were found in this layer. At a depth of 60cm we encountered a

heavily decayed fragment of rubber tubing.

AUGER CORE 3

Auger core 3 was located at N1047.96; E969.29. It was excavated to a depth of

132cm, the maximum depth that our bucket auger could reach. The soil represents

three distinct strata:

1. At a depth of 0-20cm we encountered a layer of hard, compact sand. This

sandy layer was dry and highly friable. Inclusions of roots and large pebbles

were common throughout the layer. A ceramic fragment of unknown origin

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 was found at a depth of 8cm and a clear glass fragment was found at a depth of

10cm.

2. At a depth of 21-65cm we encountered a less compact layer of sand. The soil

was was dry but moisture increased with depth. Beginning at a depth of 40cm

we encountered wood inclusions, increasing in number until a depth of 50cm

when the inclusions abruptly ended. Cultural material recovered in this layer

included a small scatter of green glass associated with the wood inclusions, a

Chinese utility ware located at a depth of 46cm, fragments of ferrous metal at a

depth of 55cm, fragments of charcoal at a depth of 55cm, and fragments of

glass at a depth of 55cm.

3. At a depth of 66-90cm we encountered a layer of sandy clay. This layer was

quite damp. Moisture content increased with depth. No inclusions were found

in this layer. Cultural materials were sparse in this layer and at a depth of 80cm

we recovered a stainless steel screw.

AUGER CORE 4

Auger core 4 was located at N1056.70; E981.35. It was excavated to a depth of

130cm, the maximum depth that our bucket auger could reach. The soil represented

three distinct strata:

1. At a depth of 0 to 25cm we encountered a hard, compact layer of sand. This

sandy layer was dry and and highly friable. Inclusions of roots and large

pebbles were common throughout the layer. No cultural material was found in

this layer.

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 2. At a depth of 25-80cm we encountered a slightly lighter layer of sand. The soil

was dry at the 25cm level but became increasingly moist with depth. There

were no inclusions in this layer. No cultural material was recovered from this

strata.

3. At a depth of 80-130cm we encountered a slightly siltier layer of sand. This

soil had a moderate amount of moisture that did not increase with depth.

Inclusions of shell and charred wood were common in this layer. Faunal and

shell remains were found in this layer. Cultural material found in this layer

includes a fragment of light green glass at a depth of 110-120cm. At a depth of

125cm we recovered a shard of Chinese produced porcelanious stoneware and

a diagnostic shard of Chinese produced brown glazed utility ware. Associated

with these diagnostic Chinese artifacts, at a depth of 125cm, were fragments of

square nails, fragments of colorless glass, and fragments of shell and faunal

remains.

AUGER CORE RESULTS

1. Subsurface deposits of Chinese artifacts appeared more common in survey area

2 than survey area 3, with three of four auger cores uncovering diagnostic

material from the Chinese occupation.

2. Auger cores revealed that the depth of potential features varied widely across

the site. Diagnostic Chinese artifacts were found at depths ranging from 18cm

below the surface to at least 125cm below the surface. The auger core results

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 did not indicate if these diagnostic artifacts were from intact features or were

from fill layers.

TEST EXCAVATION – SURVEY AREA 4

Pedestrian survey at this location resulted in very few artifacts. Survey area 4

is the most developed area excavated. Multiple buildings and cement pathways run

through survey area 4. Survey area 4 was also referred to as "Aggasiz" in field

documents in reference to the large building within the survey area. As a result of this

development, locations for pedestrian survey, shovel testing, and archaeological

excavation were more limited than in other survey areas. Historical photographs and

maps reveal that survey area 4 was a location of the Point Alones Village that did not

burn during the 1906 fire. It contained multiple detached houses where known families

lived. These houses were located on the edge of the village, between the core of the

town and the cemetery [Figures 5.8 and 5.9]. Oral history and photographic evidence

indicated that this area likely also contained yards and open space where fish drying

racks were located.

The limited ground cover and paucity of historical artifacts found during

pedestrian survey were discouraging. Because historical records indicated that intact

archaeological features from this area would have high interpretative value, it was

decided to excavate two shovel test pits despite the discouraging results from

pedestrian survey. To this end, one auger core and one 50cm X 50cm test excavation

were conducted in this survey area. An archaeological deposit known to be associated

with the Native American settlement of the site was located near Survey Area 4 (Roop

221
1977) and care was taken to ensure the proper identification of any Native American

artifacts recovered.

TEST EXCAVATION (TP-AG-01)

TP-AG-01 (Test Pit – Aggasiz – 01) was located at N1128.297; E1020.020.

This unit was excavated with shovels, hand picks, and a bucket auger. Excavated soil

was placed directly onto a 1/4 inch mesh screen and was sifted. Excavation level

records were completed. At a depth of 40cm no cultural material had been recovered

and, due to time constraints, the decision was made to continue excavation with a

bucket auger. The auger cores were excavated in approximately 5cm intervals, soil

from the bucket auger was placed directly onto a 1/4 inch mesh screen and was sifted.

During auger coring we recovered one artifact – a piece of flat glass. This artifact was

bagged, labeled, and returned to our on-site laboratory. After the field season was

complete it was taken to Stanford where it was cleaned, cataloged, and analyzed. TP-

AG-01 consisted of two strata:

1. At a depth of 0-50cm we encountered a fine and highly friable sandy silt with

medium moisture content. This layer had numerous inclusions of roots and

bark that slowly diminished with depth. At a depth of 45cm we encountered a

fragment of flat clear glass.

2. At a depth of 51-80cm we encountered a hard and dense highly friable sandy

soil with low moisture content. This soil had no inclusions. At a depth of 80cm

we reached what appeared to be bedrock and ceased excavation.

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TEST EXCAVATION (TP-AG-02)

TP-AG-02 (Test Pit – Aggasiz – 02) was located at N1113.247; E1024.136. It

was excavated with a shovel and a bucket auger. Excavated soil was placed directly

onto a 1/4 inch mesh screen and was sifted. Excavation level records were kept. At a

depth of 40cm no cultural material had been recovered and, due to time constraints,

the decision was made to continue excavation with a bucket auger. The auger cores

were excavated in approximately 5cm intervals, soil from the bucket auger was placed

directly onto a 1/4 inch mesh screen and was sifted. Excavation continued with a

bucket auger until a depth of 100cm was reached at which point the unit was declared

sterile and excavation ceased. TP-AG-02 consisted of 5 strata:

1. A bark topsoil was present from 0-10cm. This topsoil was a recently deposited

landscaping feature and no artifacts were recovered.

2. At a depth of 10-15cm a medium grain yellow/brown sand layer was

encountered. This layer was very hard and compact. There were no inclusions

or artifacts found in this layer.

3. At a depth of 15-25cm the medium grain yellow/brown sand layer became

increasingly less compact. There were no inclusions or artifacts found in this

layer.

4. At a depth of 25-27cm a very dark black organic soil was uncovered. This

layer was very shallow (a depth of 1-2cm) and did not appear to be midden.

No artifacts or inclusions were discovered in this layer.

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 5. At a depth of 27-100cm a soft find yellow sand was uncovered. No artifacts or

inclusions were discovered in this layer. At a depth of 100cm the unit was

declared sterile and excavation ceased.

SURVEY AREA 4 RESULTS

1. Stratigraphy in survey area 4 was very different from that of previous areas

surveyed. The soils appeared to be from different depositional events and the

lack of inclusions and artifacts implies that these soils were sterile fill brought

to the site some time after the Chinese occupation.

2. No subsurface deposits of Chinese artifacts were discovered in survey area 4.

Only one artifact was found during survey and excavation, a small shard of

clear flat glass, representing the sparsest concentration of subsurface deposits.

3. An auger core in TP-AG-01 reached what appeared to be bedrock at 80cm.

4. Despite being close to a known Native American site, no Native American

artifacts were recovered and no features or deposits associated with the Native

American occupation were uncovered. This indicates that that prehistoric

component of CA-MNT-104 may be more contained than had been imagined

(Roop 1977).

SUMMARY OF PRELIMINARY SURVEY RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR

SUMMER EXCAVATION

Preliminary research at the Hopkins Marine Station achieved the four primary

goals outlined at the beginning of this section:

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 1. A methodology for mapping features on the site was developed and

implemented. This methodology was used for the duration of the project.

2. Locations of the site that were likely to contain archaeological materials were

identified using historical maps, photographs, and oral history.

3. Pedestrian surface survey, test excavation, and auger coring were used to

further refine the historical data. Using these methodologies we were able to

locate areas of the site where further excavation was anticipated to uncover

intact Chinese period deposits that would help answer the theoretical and

methodological questions that guide this project. This archaeological testing

found that some areas that looked promising on historical maps and in

historical photographs were disturbed by post depositional processes and fill,

while other areas continued to show promise and, in some cases, even revealed

archaeological remains that appeared to come from intact Chinese deposits

associated with the Chinese occupation of the site.

4. The fourth goal, to “develop a plan for further archaeological testing and

excavation” is detailed in the following section.

PLAN FOR FURTHER ARCHAEOLOGICAL TESTING AND EXCAVATION

Preliminary pedestrian survey, test excavation, and auger coring provided data

that was used to refine the theoretical and methodological agenda of the project. Using

data from preliminary research, a map was created that prioritized different areas of

the site for excavation with a full crew the following summer [Figure 5.4].

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 The area with the highest excavation priority (priority area 1) was the area

close to the Boatworks building. This was an area that contained the household of a

known historical individual (Tuck Lee). Pedestrian survey had demonstrated a high

possibility of recovering intact archaeological deposits from the Chinese period, and

physical access was easy for the crew and our equipment. It was determined that

archaeological excavations during the summer woud first focus on locating deposits in

this area associated with the Tuck Lee residence.

The area located near the coast (survey area 2) was assigned excavation

priority 2. Historial maps and photographs demonstrated that this area was located in

the heart of the Point Alones Chinese village and oral histories indicated that a diverse

groups of families and “bachelor” men lived in this section of the village. Individual

occupants of houses and property lines in this area are not currently known. Auger

cores in this area had been quite promising, revealing several locations with a high

likelihood of intact deposits.

Test excavations in survey area 3, located near what was once the Southern

Pacific right of way did not reveal any intact archaeological remains. Despite this

paucity of artifacts it was determined that further excavation, with appropriate tools,

was desirable. Many of the units excavated in survey area 3 were not excavated to the

depth at which seemingly intact deposits from survey area 2 were recovered. This area

was assigned excavation priority 3.

Survey area 4 was assigned the lowest excavation priority (priority 4).

Although recovering intact deposits from survey area 4 would reveal important

information about life in the Point Alones Village, test excavations indicated that this

226
area is highly disturbed with post depositional activity such as construction related fill.

Furthermore, excavation in this area is constrained by the extensive development

including buildings and their foundations, utility lines, foot paths, and mature trees.

It was determined that excavation within these these three areas woud likely

consume the entire summer excavation season. Historical sources demonstrate that the

boundaries of the village extended outside of the limits of these survey areas but were

not surveyed or excavated for reasons such as access, time constraints, and cost. Intact

archaeological deposits may remain in these areas but their investigation is outside of

the scope of this project.

EXCAVATION

This section outlines the methodologies employed during the Summer

excavation season and details the results of these excavations. The artifacts recovered

during this field season constitute the bulk of the material culture discussed in this

dissertation and particular attention is paid to the various classes of material culture

recovered from the archaeological site. This section begins with an overview of the

team assembled to conduct this research and the archaeological methods employed

during excavation. It continues with an overview of the units excavated in priority area

1. The results of excavations in priority area 1 prompted a change in the research

strategy and these changes are detailed in this section. The remainder of the

excavation areas are then detailed by geographic area, not chronology. This is because

multiple areas were excavated simultaneously during the weeks when the excavation

team was large. Finally, I finish this section with a brief overview of the results of my

227
excavation, focusing specifically on the complex stratigraphy uncovered. Although I

provide a brief outline of the artifacts recovered from each individual unit and a brief

analysis of the spatial variation in artifact assemblage, a more thorough analysis of the

recovered materials is primarily confined to later chapters in this dissertation and a

more thorough catalog of the recovered artifacts can be found in the comprehensive

site catalog.

RESEARCH TEAM

The excavation team working at CA-MNT-104 during the summer season

included students and volunteers with a range of skills and training. Participants

included undergraduate students from Stanford and local universities. Point Alones

Village descendants and community volunteers also regularly participated in these

excavations. Many of the individuals participating in the project has previous

archaeological experience, either from working for CRM firms, participating in

previous field schools, or directing archaeological projects. The number of crew

members fluctuated depending on the schedules and commitments of project

participants. During the fourth week of the project the crew swelled due to the

presence of a team of research from Western Wyoming Community College under the

direction of Dudley Gardner. Their presence was particularly valuable and allowed the

fourth week to be exceptionally productive.

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METHODS

Unless specifically noted, archaeological units were excavated in 1 X 1 meter

squares and the soil was passed through 1/4 inch screens. Units were aligned to the

project grid and were given a name according to the the "Southwest" corner of the

square. For example, unit N1054 E982 had these coordinates at its Southwest corner.

Units were excavated with hand tools including picks, shovels, archaeological hand-

picks, trowels, and brushes. Except where noted, units were excavated in 10cm

arbitrary levels.

PRIORITY AREA 1

Priority area 1 was located near the boatworks building. It was selected as the

first location for extensive excavation primarily because surface survey had revealed a

high concentration of artifacts, including diagonstic Chinese artifacts. It was also the

location of several houses with known occupants (including Tuck Lee) and it was

easily accessible to the excavation team. Prior to excavation we conducted a second

surface survey of the area. Although the area had been surveyed six months

previously, we collected and cataloged a total of 66 artifacts, primarily from the

Marine Station and Boatworks occupation periods. None of the collected artifacts

were diagnostic Chinese artifacts. In priority area 1 we excavated the following units:

UNIT: Size:

N1074 E1014 (50cm X 50cm)

N1077 E1014 (50cm X 50cm)

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N1077 E1016 (50cm X 50cm)

N1077 E1011 (1m X 1m)

N1074 E1018 (1m X 1m)

N1077 E1012 (1m X 1m)

The decision was made to open the first three units as 50cm X 50cm units in

order to quickly determine if this area of the site had intact deposits. Although we had

intended to expand these units to full 1m X 1m units if Chinese period featurs were

located, the area did not prove productive and none of these unts were expanded. For

the location of these units within priority area 1, see [Figure 5.6].

N1074 E1014

Unit N1074 E1014 was located in a grassy area free from ground cover and

debris. This location was selected because historical documents indicated that it was

likely the location of Tuck Lee's residence. The unit was excavated with hand tools. It

was excavated in 10cm arbitrary levels. Excavated soil was sifted through a 1/4 inch

mesh screen. The unit was excavated to a depth of 70cm. At the bottom of the unit an

auger was used to excavate soil to a depth of 93cm.

The unit can be divided into four distinct strata:

1. Topsoil. At a depth of 0-3cm we encountered a topsoil of grass and roots.

Intermixed with this soil was a dry sand. In this stratum we found various

artifacts that seemed to be from the Marine Station or Boatworks Period

230
 including nails, flat glass, shell, and wood. A soil sample was taken from this

stratum.

2. Boatworks Period (1). This stratum extended from 3-26cm. This soil in this

stratum was a dry sand and its color was 10yr 2/1 wet and 10yr 3/2 dry.

Inclusions in this stratum consisted of wood, large and small rocks, and a large

ferrous rod (rebar) protruding from the North wall of the unit. Artifacts

recovered from this unit include nylon rope, pressed wood, ferrous metal, shell,

and electrical equipment. Artifacts indicate that this layer was from the Marine

Station and/or Boatworks Period. The high concentration of industrial related

artifacts suggests the latter.

3. Boatworks Period (2). This stratum extended from 26cm-55cm. The soil in this

stratum was a moist sand. It is distinguished from Boatworks Period (1) by a

slightly darker color (10yr 2/1 wet and 7.5yr 2.5/2 dry), a higher moisture

content, and occasional clay inclusions. Other inclusions found in this level

include significant amounts of wood and charcoal and a higher frequency of

rocks that increases with depth. Artifacts recovered from this site suggest that

this is a Boatworks Period deposit. Artifacts recovered include tile, nails, glass,

ferrous metal, and plastic. The transition between this layer and the sterile

inclusion is at 55 in the SE corner of the unit and expands with depth, filling

the entire unit at a depth of 70cm. Artifacts are found in Boatworks Period (2)

up to the depth of 70cm (e.g. a screw was found at a depth of 70cm).

4. Sterile inclusion. This stratum extended from a depth of 55cm. The bottom of

this stratum was not located. The stratum gradually expands across the unit

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 with depth and covers the entire unit at a depth of 70cm. At a depth of 70cm a

1/2 inch bucket auger was used to excavate this stratum to a depth of 93cm.

This stratum consists of a yellowish sand (10yr 3/4 wet and dry) with high

moisture and friability. There were no artifacts found in this layer and it

appears to be sterile.

N1074 E1014 SUMMARY

This unit appeared to be composed of two depositional periods. The first

Boatworks Period (1) and the second Boatworks Period (2) were both associated with

the Boatworks or modern periods of the site occupation. The Sterile Inclusion

contained no artifacts from occupational periods prior to the construction of the

Boatworks. No Chinese diagnostic artifacts were discovered in this unit and it was

decided not to expand this unit to a full 1 X 1 meter excavation unit and to not place

adjacent units. This was a disappointing outcome because this unit was the most likely

candidate for uncovering archaeological remains directly associated with Tuck Lee.

N1077 E1014

Unit N1077 E1014 was located directly to the South side of the Boatworks

adjacent to a concrete driveway. This was the second unit excavated as a 50cm X

50cm unit. This area was selected in an attempt to locate archaeological remains

associated with Tuck Lee's residence. The unit was excavated with hand tools

including shovels, hand picks, trawls, and a bucket auger. It was excavated in 10cm

arbitrary levels. Excavated soil was placed through a 1/4 inch screen. The unit was

232
excavated to a depth of 50cm. At that point the decision was made to cease hand

excavation and use a bucket auger. The bucket auger quickly hit impenetrable rocks

and we were unable to continue excavation in the unit. The unit can be divided into

three discrete strata.

1. Topsoil. At a depth of 0-8cm we encountered a topsoil of grass, roots, and sod.

Intermixed with this soil were artifacts from the Marine Station and/or

Boatworks Period including shell, terracotta, and ferrous metal.

2. Boatworks Period. At a depth of from 8-30cm we encountered a silty (80% silt,

20% sand) stratum with numerous rock inclusions. This soil was red-yellow in

color (10yr 3/2 wet and 10yr 2/2 dry) and contained a scattered collection of

artifacts from the Marine Station and Boatworks Periods of the site occupation.

Artifacts recovered included plastic, glass, ferrous metal, wood, and other

construction debris. The soil moisture content increased with depth.

3. Sandy Layer. At a depth of between 30-50cm we encountered a distinct sandy

layer. Although the soil color was similar to previous layers (10yr 2/2 wet and

10yr 3/2 dry) the moisture content of this layer was significantly higher than

the Boatworks Period stratum and was primarily sandy (80-90% sand, 10-20%

silt). Inclusions of large rocks were common in this layer and impeded

excavation (at a depth of 36cm in the center of the unit, 48cm in the SE corner

of the unit, and 41cm in the NW corner). At a depth of ~52cm large rocks

impeded further excavation in this unit. Rocks did not appear to be arranged

for structural purposes (as for a building foundation). A small number of shell

and ferrous metal fragments were found in this layer.

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N1077 E1014 Summary

This unit appeared to be composed of at least one depositional period

connected with the Boatworks occupation of the site. The Sandy Layer could represent

sterile fill brought in by the Pacific Improvement Company during the site cleanup

after the 1906 fire or it could represent a natural subsoil. The scattered artifacts found

in the Sandy Layer could be the result of bioturbation or, if the layer is fill, they could

be the result of contamination upon deposition. No artifacts related to the Chinese

occupation were found in this unit despite ample historical evidence indicating

decades of occupation by Point Alones Village residents. This indicates that the area

was extensively disturbed after the Chinese occupation of the site. The rocks at the

bottom of the Sandy Layer do not appear to represent an architectural feature and are

instead natural features or components of a manually deposited fill layer. The absence

of artifacts from the Chinese occupation of the site and the extensive layer of fill

convinced us not to expand the unit to a full 1m X 1m. Alternatively, it's possible that

the subsoil was deposited atop the Chinese occupation of the site and that our

excavations did not reach an adequate depth. A plan drawing of this unit can be seen

in [Figure 5.12] as an example of that component of our recordation process.

N1077 E1016

Unit N1077 E1016 was located directly to the south of the Boatworks adjacent

to a concrete driveway. This was the third unit excavated as a 50cm X 50cm unit. As

with the previous 50cm X 50cm units, this area was selected in an attempt to recover

234
archaeological remains associated with Tuck Lee's occupation of the Chinese fishing

village. The unit was excavated with hand tools. It was excavated in 10cm arbitrary

levels. Excavated soil was sifted through a 1/4 inch mesh screen. This unit was

excavated to a depth of 70cm. An auger was then used to excavate soil to a depth of

170cm below the surface.

The unit can be divided into three discrete strata:

1. Topsoil. The Topsoil extended from the surface to a depth of 5cm. Included in

this soil was short grass, roots, and a large number of granodiorite rocks.

Artifacts recovered in the Topsoil included rusty nails, water-worn glass,

terracotta, and wood fragments. These artifacts likely came from the

Boatworks or Marine Station occupations.

2. Boatworks Period. This layer extended from a depth of ~5cm to a depth of

approximately 70cm. The soil was a dry sand and moisture content increased

with depth. The soil was yellow-red color (10yr 2/1 wet, 10YR 4/2 dry). There

were many large rocks located in this strata. The rocks were so large and

unwieldy that they prevented excavation below a depth of 26cm in the center

of the unit, 11cm in the NW corner of the unit, and 46cm in the SW corner of

the unit. The rocks did not appear to represent a foundation or other

architectural feature. Other inclusions in this strata include numerous smaller

rocks and small amounts of roots. This soil contained numerous inclusions of

darker soil at various locations and depths (10yr 22 wet, 10yr 3/3 dry).

Presence and type of artifacts did not appear to vary with soil composition.

Artifacts recovered in this layer are indicative of the Boatworks Period

235
 occupation and include nails, string, wire, glass, charred wood, abalone shell.

The presence of artifacts was consistant throughout the layer.

3. Clay Subsoil. This layer extended from a depth of 70cm to a depth of at least

170cm below the surface. This soil was a wet clay with a moisture content

increasing with depth. The soil had occasional inclusions of rocks and yellow

sandy soil. There were no artifacts recovered in this layer. At a depth of 170cm

physical limitations made further excavation impossible and we decided to

close the unit.

N1077 E1016 SUMMARY

The unit appeared to be composed of a single depositional event related to the

Boatworks Period superimposed above a natural subsoil. The absence of intact

remains from the Chinese period indicates the likely possibility of post depositional

fill, clearing, and/or leveling associated with the immediate post-Chinatown period or

the Boatworks Period of the site occupation. It is posible that the Clay Subsoil is an

imported fill. The numerous rocks do not appear to be associated with a foundation or

other structure and the extensive presence of Boatworks Period archaeological remains

below these rocks indicates that they postdate the Chinese occupation. The difficulty

in excavating around the rocks and the absence of intact Chinese remains persuaded

me to not open the unit into a full 1m X 1m.

236
N1074 E1018

This is the fifth unit excavated in priortiy area 1. It was as a full 1m X 1m unit.

It was located on a grassy area immediately to the south of the paved driveway. Like

the other units in priority area 1, it was located near what was once Tuck Lee's house

and yard. The unit was excavated with hand tools to a depth of 82cm. At that depth it

was clear that we had reached a sterile subsoil and we ended excavation in the unit.

Excavated soil was shifted through a 1/4 inch screen and collected artifacts were

recorded and bagged.

The unit can be divided into five discrete strata:

1. Topsoil. This stratum was encountered between a depth of 0-3cm. The soil was

a dark silty sand (5yr 2.5/1 wet, 10yr 4/2 dry). This stratum contained

inclusions of short grass, root systems, and scattered small local rocks.

Artifacts found in the stratum included shell, terracotta, and ferrous metal.

2. Grey Fill. This stratum extended from a depth of 3cm to a depth of 50-71

(50cm in the East side of the unit, 71cm in the West side of the unit). It was a

silty sand (~30% silt and 70% sand) and was a grey color (7.5yr 2.5/1 wet,

7.5yr 4/1 dry). Inclusions consisted of local rocks and roots. Artifacts located

in this stratum included objects from the Boatworks and Marine Station

occupations. Ferrous metal, glass, wood, ceramics, and plastic were all present.

Additionally, a fair amount of charred wood was recovered at a depth of 21-

30cm. This was not a discrete 'burn layer' but indicates either fire on site or the

introduction of burned material from off site. This stratum and the Dark

Inclusion stratum described below were mottled together at varying depths and

237
 were often difficult to differentiate from one another. Artifacts from these

layers were quite similar and were bagged and recorded together.

3. Dark Inclusion. This stratum was encountered between ~30/35cm and

~50/71cm (50cm in the east side of the unit and 71cm in the west side of the

unit). This soil was a silty sand (60% silt, 30% sand 10% clay) that was a dark

color (10yr 3/1 wet, 10yr 2/1 dark). The soil had a medium moisture content

that increased with depth. Inclusions of rocks, small and large, were common

in this stratum. Artifacts recovered from this stratum were similar to artifacts

recovered from the Grey Fill layer described above and likely represented a

Boatworks Period deposit. These artifacts included ferrous metal, glas,

ceramics, charred wood, and faunal remains.

4. Red/Brown Fill. This stratum was encountered between 50/71cm and 75cm. It

consisted of a silty sand (45% sand, 45% silt, 10% clay) with a moderate

moisture content. It was red/brown in color (7.5yr 4/4 wet, 7.5yr 4/4 dry) and

did not change in moisture content or color with depth. There were numerous

small and medium sized pieces of decomposing granodiorite in this stratum.

Artifacts were much less common in this stratum than in previous strata from

this unit and became increasingly scarse with depth. Artifacts recovered from

this unit included barnacle, ferrous metal, and small fragments of charred

wood. The stratum appeared to be fill associated with the Boatworks

occupation of the site.

5. Subsoil. This Subsoil was encountered at a depth of 75cm and extended to an

unknown depth. This Subsoil consisted of an incredibly hard decomposed

238
 rock. (2.5y 3/2 wet, 2.5y 3/2 dry) 90% sand, 10% clay. This layer contained

occasional inclusions of a dense yellow clay. The moisture content of this

stratum increased with depth. There were no artifacts found in this stratum.

The stratum was excavated to a depth of 85cm after which it was decided to

cease excavation and move to more productive locations.

N1074 E1018 SUMMARY

This unit appears to consist of two discrete depositional periods associated

with the post Chinese occupation of the site. The Grey Fill and Dark Inclusion appar

to have been deposited at the same time and are clearly associated with the Boatworks

Period of the site occupation. The Red/Brown Fill was deposited prior to the Grey Fill

and Dark Inclusion in a separate event. The absence of Chinese related artifacts in this

layer and the presence of a small number of Boatworks Period artifacts indicates that

the deposition of this layer likely post dates the Chinese occupation of the site. It it

possible that this is fill that was brought in during the “cleanup” process conducted by

the Pacific Improvement Company after the 1906 fire, or that this soil was brought in

as the Boatworks building was being constructed but before it saw active use as a

manufacturing site. There is also a small chance that this is a natural strata and the

artifacts found in this layer were deposited through bioturbation. The Subsoil appears

to be the natural foundation of the site and the decomposed soil compares favorably in

composition and color to exposed rocks found throughout the area.

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N1077 E1011

This unit was excavated as a 1m x 1m unit. It was located directly to the south

of the Boatworks building adjacent to the concrete driveway. It was excavated in

10cm arbitrary levels. Like the other units in priority area 1, it was selected due to its

proximity to Tuck Lee's residence and for its potential to reveal intact deposits from

the Chinese component of the site. The unit was excavated with hand tools to a depth

of 35cm at which point the unit was abandoned for safety reasons and an adjacent unit

(N1077 E1014) was excavated.

The unit can be divided into three distinct strata:

1. Topsoil. This soil was encountered from a depth of 0-~4cm. The soil was a dry

silty sand (90% sand, 10% silt). It was a dark color (10yr 3/1 wet, 10yr 5/1

dry). This stratum contained extensive inclusions of roots, grass, and wood.

Artifacts recovered from this level included glass, ferrous metal, cement, and

other debris related to the Marine Station period of site occupation.

2. Dark Soil. This soil was encountered at a depth of ~4-30cm when excavation

on the unit was halted for safety reasons. It likely extends to a greater depth.

This stratum contains moist sandy silt (90% sand, 10% silt) that was grey in

color (7.5yr 2.5/1 wet, 7.5yr 3/1 dry). Inclusions of rocks and grass roots were

common in this layer. Inclusions from the Sand stratum are common in this

layer and increase with depth until they consolidate into a discrete stratum.

Artifacts found in this level include wood, ferrous metal, and shell. These

artifacts primarily seem to represent the Boatworks and Marine Station

occupations of the site. Two fragments of Chinese celadon ceramics were

240
 found in this layer (at a depth of 6.5 and 7cm). They were found in direct

association with more recent artifacts. A ferrous metal water pipe protrudes

from the south sidewall of the unit into this strata at a depth of 25cm.

3. Sand. This stratum begins at a depth of 21cm (although inclusions of this

stratum are found at shallower levels. This is a light and moist sand (5yr 5/2

wet, 2/5yr6/4 dry). The stratum consolidates with depth and eventually forms a

discrete stratum that bisects the Recently Deposited Fill at a depth of 21cm.

There are no inclusions in this layer and it is completely sterile. After

consulting with the staff of the Marine Station they suggested that the sand was

fill associated with a previously unrecorded electrical line. For reasons of

safety we decided to cease excavation in this unit and open an adjacent unit.

N1077 E1011 SUMMARY

This unit consisted of two depositional periods associated with the Hopkins

Marine Station occupation of the site. The Sand stratum was clearly placed as

intentional fill brought from outside of the bounds of CA-MNT-104 and made

intentionally sterile in order to mark the location of a potentially dangerous electrical

line. The Fill stratum contained a jumble of artifacts from multiple occupational

periods, including material from the Chinese occupation of the site. This suggests that

the Fill stratum was placed contemporaneously with the Sand stratum but, unlike the

Sand stratum, was taken from another area of CA-MNT-104. Alternatively, this soil

could have been taken from the area where the Sand stratum now lies. This suggests

that there are may be other areas of the site (from where this fill was taken) that might

241
contain intact features from the Chinese occupation or that an intact feature from the

Chinese occupation may be located directly below the electrical line.

N1077 E1012

This was the final unit excavated in priority area 1. It was located directly to

the east of unit N1077 E1011, which was only excavated to a depth of 30cm due to

safety concerns. Because the Sand stratum located in N1077 E1012 seemed to veer to

the north of N1077 E1011 (towards the boatworks building), it seemed unlikely that

the Sand stratum and associated Recently Deposited Fill stratum would be

encountered in this unit. The unit was excavated as a 1m X 1m unit. It was excavated

with hand tools including shovels, hand picks, trowels, and a bucket auger. It was

excavated in 10cm arbitrary levels. Excavated soil was passed through a 1/4 inch mesh

screen. The unit was excavated to a depth of 95cm at which point archaeologically

sterile soil was reached and I decided to ceace excavations in the unit.

The unit can be divided into five distinct strata:

1. Topsoil. This soil was encountered from a depth of 0-4cm. The soil was a dry

silty sand (90% sand, 10% silt). It was a dark color (10yr 3/1 wet, 10yr 5/1

dry). This stratum contained extensive inclusions of roots, grass, and wood.

The Northwest corner of this stratum consisted of a thin layer of modern

concrete poured onto the surface. Artifacts recovered from this level included

glass, plastic, ferrous metal, cement, and other debris related to the Marine

Station or Boatworks Periods of site occupation.

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2. Sand. This stratum is an extension of the Sand stratum from N1077 E1011.

Composition, color, and moisture level are identical to that found in N1077

E1011. This layer was completely sterile and clearly represents Marine Station

fill. Due to safety concerns we did not excavate this portion of the unit and we

established a 10cm buffer around the sand layer.

3. Dark Soil. This stratum seems to be an extension of the Dark Soil stratum of

N1077 E1011. It begins at a depth of 4cm and extends to a depth of 85cm. At

varying depths it extends through between 1/2 and 2/3 of the unit. This layer is

difficult to characterize as it contains inclusions of various other soil layers, but

the predominant soil seems to be a light red/yellow (10yr 2/2 wet, 10yr 4/1

dry) sandy soil (80% sand, 20% silt) that is dry near the surface but becomes

increasingly moist with depth. There are many inclusions in this layer

including several very large rocks and fragments of concrete that, at times,

took up much of the unit. A considerable amount of organic material (primarily

roots) was found in this unit. Inclusions of clay and soil from the Light Soil

stratum described below are common in this layer. This soil contained artifacts

from both the Chinese and Boatworks occupational periods of the site

including ferrous metal, shell, ceramics, wood, glass, and plastic. Many of

these artifacts were burned or otherwise affected by fire. This stratum extend to

a depth of 85cm when it reached an interface with the Light Soil described

below.

4. Light Soil. This stratum began as an inclusions in the Dark Soil stratum at a

depth of 4cm and extends to a depth of approximately 90cm when it was

243
 replaced by the Subsoil stratum. At a depth of 85cm it extends through the

entire unit (with numerous inclusions of the Subsoil stratum at this depth). The

soil is a light color (2.5yr 4/2 wet, 2/5yr 4/3 dry) and is moister than the

adjacent Dark Soil. As is common throughout the site, the moisture content

increase with depth. Inclusions in this layer were less common than in the

adjacent layer and no large fragments of cement was found. Rocks were

present in this stratum as were several filled-in gopher holes indicating

bioturbation. Organic inclusions and soil abnormalities were also significantly

less common in this stratum. Artifacts recovered from this stratum primarily

consisted of Marine Statinon and/or Boatworks Period items such as ferrous

metal, glass, and wood.

5. Subsoil. This stratum began at a depth of 90cm. It consists of a yellow colored

(2.5y 3/1 wet, 2.5y 3/2 dry) sandy (90% sand 10% clay) soil. This layer

contained inclusions of large rocks that made it difficult to excavate. The soil

was incredibly hard. The stratum was sterile contained no artifacts .

N1077 E1012 SUMMARY

This unit consisted of two discrete depositional periods. The first, consisting of

the Sand and the Dark Soil strata were associated with modern trenching for an

electrical line. The presence of artifacts from the Marine Station, Boatworks, and

Chinese occupations of the site within these strata and their lack of spatial

differentiation indicates that the fill was taken from another area of CA-MNT-104,

possibly an area with formerly intact archaeological deposits from these occupational

244
periods. The presence of large chunks of concrete in this fill suggests that the

deposition was created with heavy machinery. Construction projects at the site, such

as trenching for electrical lines, commonly use heavy machinery to trench and

backfill. The second depositional period consisted of the Light Soil and was likely

deposited prior to the Sand and Dark Soil strata. This soil was similar in composition

and artifact content to the other soils in priortiy area 1 and the presence of artifacts

from the Boatworks occupation of the site suggests that it was deposited at that time.

The Subsoil is simliar to the sterile Subsoil found in other units and compares

favorably with outcroppings of natural rock that protrudes from other areas of CA-

MNT-104.

PRIORITY AREA 1 CONCLUSIONS

The units excavated in priority area 1 suggest that this area of the site does not

contain intact archaeological remains from the Chinese occupation of CA-MNT-104.

The primary soil type appears to be fill soil associated with the Boatworks and Marine

Station occupations of the site. These soils and artifacts do not appear to have been

deposited as the result of a single, archaeologically significant depositional period or

process (for example, a trash pit associated with boat construction) but are instead

debris that have been scattered about the site through casual deposition and the mixing

of fill layers. After the 1906 fire, a number of Chinese buildings still stood in priority

area 1. These buildings were demolished by the Pacific Improvement Company after

245
Tuck Lee and the last remaining Chinese residents were forcefully evicted from the

area. The archaeological evidence recovered from this area of the site suggests that the

demolition of the physical presence of this part of the Chinese community extended

beyond the surface features. Either during the Pacific Improvement Company

"cleanup" of the site or during later construction of the still-standing Monterey

Boatworks building, this area of the Point Alones Village was excavated and possibly

graded. Despite the removal of intact features from the areas of priority area 1 that

were explored in this project, occasional scattered remains from the Chinese

occupation of the site were found during excavation this area. These remains are found

in fill layers that were most likely taken from other areas of the site. This strongly

suggests the possibility of intact archaeological remains from the Chinese occupation

of the site were present in other areas of CA-MNT-104. After excavation of units

described above it was decided to abandon priority area 1 and focus on regions of the

site that might prove more productive.

EXCAVATING UNDERNEATH THE BOATWORKS BUILDING

A lingering question about this area remained: Did the post depositional earth

moving occur before or after the construction of the Monterey Boatworks building?

Two 50cm X 50cm units were placed in the foundation area of the Boatworks building

in order to determine the stratigraphic profile of these soils and test for the presence of

intact Chinese features. These units were excavated using hand tools and the

excavated soil was passed through a 1/4 inch mesh screen. They were excavated in

natural strata, not arbitrary 10cm levels [See Figure 5.6 for the location of these units].

246
Boatworks Unit 1

This was the first boatworks unit excavated. It was excavated to a depth of 1 meter

(100cm).

The unit can be divided into four distinct strata:

1. Topsoil. This stratum was encountered between the surface and a depth of 9-

13cm. It consisted of silty sand (45% silt, 45% sand). This stratum contained

numerous inclusions of roots. Artifacts found in this layer included extensive

faunal remains, ceramics, including diagnostic Chinese ceramics, and ferrous

metal.

2. Stratum 1. This layer was located directly underneath the Topsoil stratum and

extended to a depth of 19-29cm at which point it interfaced with Stratum 2.

This soil was a hard sand (70% sand, 20% silt, 10% clay) that was dark in

color. The stratum inclusions consisted of roots in smaller quantity than in the

Topsoil stratum. Artifacts recovered from this stratum included Chinese

ceramics and ferrous metal. The quantity of artifacts recovered decreased with

depth.

3. Stratum 2: This stratum was located directly underneath Stratum 1 and extends

to a depth of 90-92cm. The soil in this stratum consists of a moist sand (80%

sand, 10% silt, 5% clay). A large gopher hole at a depth of 35cm was

uncovered indicating the presence of large amonts of bioturbation at the site.

Several large rocks were also uncovered at a depth of 45-47cm. These rocks

preventeed further excavation in those areas of the stratum. This soil appears to

247
 be the same as the light 'fill' layers found outside of the Boatworks building.

Very few artifacts were found in this layer and those artifacts mostly consisted

of ferrous metal fragments.

4. Subsoil. This stratum was located at a depth of 92cm and extended to an

unknown depth. It was excavated to a depth of 100cm at which point the soil

became too hard to continue further excavation. Soil in this stratum consists of

a moist yellow colored (2.5y 3/1 wet, 2.5y 3/2 dry) sandy (90% sand 10% clay)

soil. No inclusions or artifacts were found in this layer.

BOATWORKS UNIT 1 SUMMARY

This unit consisted of three discrete depositional periods. The most recent is

associated with the Topsoil stratum. This layer contained artifacts from an ambiguous

range of occupational periods, including several ceramic fragments that are clearly

from the Chinese occupation. It is possible, though unlikely, that these artifacts were

directly deposited during the Chinese occupational period. Stratum 1 contained

scattered artifacts from the Chinese occupation of the site. It is possible that these

artifacts are associated with a primary depositional event during the Chinese

occupation of the site or that they were deposited in association with fill and grading

activity to prepare the site for the construction of the Boatworks building. Stratum 2

contained very few artifacts. The artifacts that were present could easily be explained

by bioturbation. The Subsoil stratum compares favorably to the sterile Subsoil stratum

found in other units and compares favorably with outcroppings of natural rock that

protrudes from other areas of CA-MNT-104.

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BOATWORKS UNIT 2

This unit was the second and final Boatworks unit excavated. Like the previous

Boatworks unit it was excavated with hand tools and the soils recovered were placed

through a 1/4 inch mesh screen.

The unit can be divided into four distinct strata:

1. Topsoil. This stratum was located at the surface and extended to a depth of 2-

4cm. It consisted of silty sand (45% silt, 45% sand). There appear to be no

inclusions in this stratum. Artifacts recovered the topsoil include extensive

deposits of ferrous metal that could be related to any historic period occupation

of the site.

2. Hard Pack. At a depth of 2-4 cm we encountered a very hard layer of soil. This

layer was superimposed directly atop a flat group of large water-warn rocks.

This Hard Pack and collection of rocks may represent a floor or other feature.

An extensive scatter of artifacts was recovered from this stratum including

ferrous metal, numerous Chinese ceramics, and a glass Chinese game piece.

These artifacts are likely all related to the Chinese period of site occupation.

3. Dark Soil. At a depth of between 6-8cm and ~20cm we encountered a a moist

sand (80% sand, 10% silt, 5% clay). Inclusions of small rocks were common in

this stratum. Artifacts recovered from this stratum include ferrous metal. These

artifacts were found near the top of this stratum and could have been deposited

in association with the Hard Pack.

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 4. Light Soil. This stratum was found directly underneath the Dark Soil stratum.

It extends to a depth of ~1 meter (100cm), although inclusions from the

Subsoil begin to appear at a depth of 70cm. The soil in this stratum consists of

a moist sand (80% sand, 10% silt, 5% clay). A small number of rock inclusions

were found in this layer. No artifacts were recovered from this layer.

5. Subsoil. This soil was found at a depth of ~70cm below surface and constituted

the entirety of the unit at a depth of 100cm. Soil in this stratum consists of a

moist yellow colored (2.5y 3/1 wet, 2.5y 3/2 dry) sandy (90% sand 10% clay)

soil. No inclusions or artifacts were found in this layer.

BOATWORKS UNIT 2 SUMMARY

This unit is difficult to interpret. It consistes of at least three discrete

depositional periods superimposed atop a natural subsoil. The Topsoil contained

artifacts from both the Marine Station and Chinese occupations of the site. The layer

of Hard Pack, its association with Chinese period artifacts, and the absence of artifacts

clearly associated with the Boatworks or Marine Station occupations underneath the

Hard Pack layer suggests that it could be a Chinese period surface – perhaps a floor

associated with the house of Ki Fok or Quong Yet? The artifacts recovered from the

Dark Soil stratum could be from any of the occupational periods of the site. The Light

Soil stratum contained no artifacts and is either a natural stratum or a large layer of fill

brought in prior to grading and the construction of the boatworks building. The

250
Subsoil stratum compares favorably to the sterile Subsoil stratum found in other units

and compares favorably with outcroppings of natural rock that protrudes from other

areas of CA-MNT-104.

BOATWORKS CONCLUSIONS

Excavations underneath the Boatworks building produced results that were

significantly more encouraging than the excavations in survey area 1. Both units

contained strata that may represent undisturbed Chinese period deposits – including a

possible Chinese period surface. The presence of these potential deposits near the

surface is not surprising when we consider that the Boatworks building was

constructed prior to subsequent industrial activity on the site. Because the buildings in

this area of the Chinese village did not burn during the 1906 fire we would not

necessarily expect to see a burn layer. Alternatively, these artifacts could have been

deposited in fill that was associated with grading in preparation for the construction of

the Boatworks building. Further excavation would be required to determine which of

these hypotheses is correct. Unfortunately further excavation would prove difficult as

safety concerns with the post and pile foundation of the Boatworks building would

arise from more intensive excavation. Despite this intriguing stratigraphy, the area

located directly underneath the Boatworks is not in substantive danger of destruction

or construction-related activities and it was decided to focus our time and attention on

other areas of the site.

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PRIORITY AREA 2

Priority area 2 had shown great promise during the pedestrian survey and auger

coring during preliminary fieldwork. Prior to excavation we conducted another

systematic surface survey of this area and found a high concentration of Chinese

period artifacts located directly along the coastline. Historical photographs and maps

both indicated a high concentration of Chinese buildings in this area. Because of the

promising results of our initial survey, our pedestrian survey, and the high

concentration of known Chinese buildings in this area we decided to place four units

along the coastline. These units were placed judgmentally in areas that did not require

the removal of large trees or shrubs. In the course of excavation we opened up a fourth

unit directly adjacent to one of the primary units (N1054 E982).

These units proved incredibly productive and the majority of archaeological

data from the Chinese occupation of the site used in this dissertation were recovered

from these excavation units. In priority area 2 we excavated the following units:

Unit: Size:

N1012 E997 (1m X 1m)

N1042 E980 (1m X 1m)

N1054 E981 (1m X 1m)

N1054 E982 (1m X 1m)

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N1012 E997

Unit N1012 E997 was located in a grassy area free of major trees and shrubs.

This unit was placed especially close to the feature known as "monkey rock." This unit

was excavated with hand tools to a depth of 140cm. This unit was excavated in

cultural strata. Excavated soil was sifted through a 1/4 inch mesh screen. The unit was

excavated to a depth of 1.42m (142cm). The stratigraphy of this unit was complex and

drawings of the soil profiles can be found in [Figure 5.13].

The unit can be divided into six distinct strata:

1. Topsoil. This stratum extended from the surface to a depth of 3 or 4 cm. This

layer contained extensive inclusions of organic matter, primarily bark and

roots. Artifacts recovered include Marine Station period plastic, cement, glass,

and ceramics.

2. Light Ash Soil 1. This stratum extended from the interface with the topsoil to a

depth of between 5 and 10cm. It consists of a highly compacted, dry, and

friable light ashy soil (2.5y 3/2 wet, 2.5y 5/2 dry). Organic inclusions remain

present though they are not as extensive as in the Topsoil strata. Artifacts

recovered from this stratum include ferrous metal, glass, cement, and ceramic

fragments from the post-Chinese periods of site occupation.

3. Yellow Clay Fill. This stratum extends from the interface with the Light Ash

Soil to a depth of 52-56cm. It consists of a highly compacted very moist sandy

clay (40% sand, 10% silt, 50% clay). This layer contained no organic

inclusions. There was evidence of minor rodent or insect disturbance. The soil

was almost completely sterile with the exception of a few small glass and

253
 metal artifacts located at the interface between this stratum and the interfacing

stratum. Excavators believed that the presence artifacts was most likely due to

bioturbation.

4. Light Ash Soil 2. This stratum extended from the interface with the the Yellow

Clay Fill to a depth of between 69cm and 74cm. It did not extend across the

entire unit and was sporadically intermixed with the Dark Impacted Soil

stratum. There appeared to be no difference in the artifact composition of these

two strata. This layer consisted of a very moist ashy dark soil (10 yr 3/2 wet,

10 yr 5/1 dry), this was similar to the soil found superimposed above the

Yellow Clay Fill stratum but was significantly ashier. The soil was a silty sand

(85% sand, 10% silt, 5% clay). Inclusions in this stratum consisted of water-

warn stones, extensive amounts of charcoal, and several large rocks. There

seemed to be a small amount of bioturbation in this strata (holes from 3-5cm in

diamater). Artifacts recovered from this unit include ceramics, wood, a shell

button, faunal remains, and a large Chinese stoneware vessel. These artifacts

appear to be from the Chinese occupation of the site.

5. Dark Impacted Soil. This stratum extended from the interface with the Light

Ash Soil to a depth of 115cm at which point the soil reached an interface with

the Subsoil. This soil was a very moist sandy soil (70% sand, 5% silt, 25%

clay). This soil was significantly darker than the soil in previous strata (10yr

2/1 wet, 2.5y 3/1 dry). Inclusions in this stratum consisted of small clusters of

yellow/white clay, rocks (1-10cm in diamater), and large rounded stones (10-

15cm in diamater). Organic inclusions consisted of roots and extensive

254
 deposits of ash and wood. This stratum was disturbed by a moderate amount of

bioturbation and several gopher holes (~5cm in diamater) were excavated.

These gopher holes tended to consist of inclusions of soils from the Light Ash

Soil 2 and the Yellow Clay Fill strata. Artifact from this stratum were

characteristic of a midden deposit associated with the Chinese occupation of

the site. Artifacts recovered included ceramics, glass, small finds, shell and

faunal remains, fishing related material, and ferrous metals.

6. Subsoil. The Subsoil was encountered at a depth of between 130cm and

143cm. The soil in this stratum consisted of a very hard and moist yellow

colored (2.5y 3/1 wet, 2.5y 3/2 dry) sandy (90% sand 10% clay) soil. The

stratum contained inclusions of roots at the interface between this stratum and

the Dark Impacted Soil. There was a small gopher hole in the NE corner of this

strata that extended partially into this stratum. All artifacts recovered from this

stratum were recovered within 5cm of the interface between this strata and the

Dark Impacted Soil. Below this depth the soil appeared to be sterile. It appears

to be the same subsoil that was present in units in survey area 1 and that can be

seen in exposed rocks and outcroppings on the site.

N1012 E997 SUMMARY:

This unit can be divided into three discrete depositional periods: The first,

consisting of the Light Ash Soil postdates the Chinese occupation of the site and is

likely fill associated with the Boatworks and/or Marine Station occupations of the site.

The Yellow Clay Fill is an interesting stratum that did not appear in any other

255
excavated units at CA-MNT-104. It is sterile and unlike any other natural soils found

at CA-MNT-104. This suggests that the fill was brought to the site from a location

outside the bounds of CA-MNT-104. The layer is quite thick (40-50cm) The sterility

of this layer and its clear difference from neighboring soils suggests that the layer was

deposited in one episode and that it was intentionally placed, perhaps in consort with

other leveling or grading occurring at the site. The fill separates a Chinese period

midden deposit from Boatworks or Marine Station related strata. I have found no

historical records indicating the potential origin of this fill and discussions with

Hopkins Marine Station employees did not reveal the source of the fill. The two layers

directly underneath the fill: the Lights Ash Soil 2 and the Dark Impacted Soil seem to

represent Chinese related trash middens. The dark ashy soil and high charcoal content

that characterizes these strata could have one of several historical origins. It is possible

that these strata are middens deposited immediately after the 1906 fire. Alternatively,

they could represent a trash midden that was active during the Chinese occupation.

The subsoil of this unit compares favorably to the subsoil found throughout the site.

N1042 E980

Unit N1042 E980 was located on a small patch of grass between a footpath and

the shoreline. Historical documents and photographs indicate that this unit was placed

in an area of the Chinese village with densely packed structures. This unit was

excavated with hand tools to a depth of 160cm. Excavated soil was sifted through a

1/4 inch mesh screen. Drawings of the soil profiles can be found in [Figure 5.14].

The unit can be divided into five distinct strata:

256
1. Topsoil. This stratum extended from the surface to a depth of approximately

8cm. This layer contained inclusions of organic matter, primarily bark and

roots. Artifacts recovered include shell, plastic, and ferrous metal. This

artifacts and soil was typical of Marine Station associated topsoil found

throughout the site.

2. Dark Fill. This stratum interfaced with the Topsoil at a depth of approximately

8cm and extended to a depth of approximately 70cm where it interfaced with

the Barnacle Layer stratum. This fill is made-up of three distinct soil types: a

hard clay soil (40% sand, 0% silt, 60% clay), a sandy pebbly soil, and a sandy

soil. These three soil intermingle throughout the stratum and contain similar

artifacts and inclusions. The inclusions in this layer consist of roots, rocks, and

wood. Bioturbation in the form of gopher holes are present in the stratum.

Artifacts recovered from this stratum include building material (concrete,

brick, asphalt), ferrous metal, ceramics (including Chinese ceramics), and

glass. The presence of such a mixed range of artifacts with little temporal

control indicates that this layer is post depositional fill associated with the

Boatworks or Marine Station periods, likely taken from or mixed with soils

from another area of CA-MNT-104.

3. Barnacle Layer. This stratum interfaced with the Dark Fill stratum and

extended to a depth of approximately 90cm. This stratum was composed of an

extensive volume of barnacle shells within a matrix of dark, sandy loam (7.5yr

2.5/1 wet, 7.5yr 4/1 dry). This stratum had occasional clay incluions. There

was little bioturbation in this stratum. Artifacts recovered from this stratum

257
 seem to be associated with the Boatworks Period of site occupation and

consisted of wood, ferrous metal (including lage nails), and glass. Some

Chinese ceramics were found at the interface between this stratum and the

Dark Loam located directly beneath it. Oral history indicated that during the

Boatworks occupation of the site the independent owners of fishing boats

would "pull their boats up on the rail [a rail system built for moving boats

around the site, the remains of which can still be seen today] and scrape off the

barnacles." It is almost certain that this stratum represent the discard layer from

this activity.

4. Dark Loam. This stratum was located directly underneath the Barnacle Layer

and continued to a depth of approximately 152cm. The stratum was composed

of a dark sandy soil (80% sand, 10% silt, 10% clay. The color was 7.5yr 2.5/1

wet, slowly changing over time to 7.5yr 3/1 wet and 7.5yr 3/1 dry slowly

changing over time to 7.5yr 5/1 dry). This stratum has a moderate amount of

moisture that increases with depth. Inclusions of small rocks and patches of a

light grey soil are present in this stratum. Artifact content does not seem to

vary in the areas where light grey soil is present. These inclusions were small

and it was decided to classify them together with the Dark Loam. There is a

moderate amount of bioturbation in this stratum including two large gopher

holes, one at a depth of 98cm and the other at a depth of 135c. Artifacts found

within the gopher holes included a piece of plastic found at a depth of 100cm

in the Northwest corner of the unit and miscellaneous pieces of ferrous metal.

Artifacts found within the stratum included Chinese ceramics, ferrous metal,

258
 shell, faunal remains showing clear signs of butchery, and glass. There was

also a fairly extensive amount of charcoal recovered from this unit. At a depth

of approximately 130cm below the surface the amount of cultural material

recovered from the strata began to drop-off. These artifacts suggest that this

stratum represents a midden from the Chinese occupation of the site.

5. Grey Subsoil. This stratum was located directly underneath the Dark Loam. It

consisted of moderately moist sand (80% sand, 10% silt, 10% clay) that was a

light grey color (10yr 4/1 wet, 10yr 5/1 dry). This soil contained no significant

inclusions. There was evidence of bioturbation in the form of gopher holes at a

depth of 160cm in the southwest corner of the unit. There were no artifacts

recovered from these gopher holes. There were a few scattered artifacts

recovered in this stratum. All recovered artifacts were found within 3cm of the

interface with the Dark Loam stratum are likely not associated with the

deposition of this Grey Subsoil stratum. This stratum was excavated to a depth

of 170cm at which point an auger was placed in the unit. The auger was

extended to a depth of 200cm below the surface. The soil remained largely

unchanged with depth (although it became increasingly moist with depth) and

no artifacts or inclusions were recovered from the auger core.

N1042 E980 SUMMARY

This unit can be divided into three discrete occupational periods: The first,

consisting of the Topsoil and Dark Fill strata postdates the Barnacle Layer stratum and

could be associated with either the Boatworks or Marine Station occupations of the

259
site. Artifacts recovered from this stratum are indeterminate. The Barnacle Layer is a

unique feature on the site and clearly relates to the industrial and commercial uses of

this land during the time when the Boatworks was operational. Further excavation in

this area would be welcome to determine the extent of this feature but is outside the

scope of this dissertation (which more narrowly focused on the Chinese occupation of

the site). The earliest occupational period uncovered in this unit, represented by the

Dark Loam, appears to be an unorganized midden associated with the Chinese

occupation of the site. Some modern (plastic – from the Marine Station occupation of

CA-MNT-104) artifacts were found in this layer. These modern artifacts were found in

association with evidence of bioturbation and are located underneath what is clearly an

intact deposit from the Boatworks occupation of the site (the Barnacle Layer). This

stratum does not contain heavy ash content or other evidence of fire related deposition

(unlike the three other units in this survey area). There is no coherent way to exactly

date the artifacts associated with this midden and there are multiple possible

explanations for its formation. It could be associated with the post-1906 fire clean-up

of the site (although one would expect there to be stronger evidence of fire affected

soils and artifacts were that the case). Presence of butchered faunal remains and a

relative scarcity of whole artifacts suggests that this layer might represent a trash

midden that slowly or quickly accumulated during the Chinese occupation of the site.

N1054 E981 AND N1054 E982

These two units were placed directly adjacent to one another and they share

similar stratigraphic profiles [Figure 5.15]. They were located directly adjacent to the

260
coast in an area of the site that contained residences during the Chinese occupation of

CA-MNT-104. It is located directly south of a sandy inlet that residents of Chinese the

village used to store and launch their boats. The location of these buildings (on the

north end of the more densely populated section of the village) was clearly an area

with intense activity. This area of the site was likely one of the central gathering

places for Chinese residents as they went about their daily tasks of preparing and

launching boats and transferring caught fish, squid, and abalone from their boats to the

shore. N1054 E982 was the first unit excavated in this area. At a depth of 120cm it

became apparent that artifacts from this unit represented a major intact feature from

the Chinese occupation of the site and the decision was made to expand the 1m X 1m

excavation unit into two adjacent 1m X 1m excavation units. The stratigraphy of these

units was far more complex than the stratigraphy of other excavated units and a total

of sixteen clearly distinct strata were recorded during excavation. For the purposes of

this dissertation, these strata have been divided into five components, each of which is

characterized by distinct soil types, inclusions, and index artifacts:

1. Topsoil/Modern Fill [strata 1-3]: This depositional period represents activity

that is clearly associated with the Marine Station occupation of the site. It is

found from the surface to a depth of 40cm below the surface. It is composed of

three distinct soils, a topsoil (soil 1), a smattering of sandy inclusions (3), and a

fill layer (2). Soil 1 is a topsoil that is clearly of recent deposition and is of

similar composition to other topsoils found in CA-MNT-104. These two units

contained a significantly thinner topsoil layer than was average throughout

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 CA-MNT-104. This is likely due to the sparse ground cover in this area of the

site. Soil 2 is represented by a dry poorly sorted dark grayish brown soil (10yr

3/2 wet, 10yr 5/2 dry). Inclusions in this component are very common and

consist of roots, rock, charcoal, cement, and yellow sand (Soil 3). The

inclusions do not form a continuous layer and were likely deposited

contemporaneously with the primary soils of the component. Index artifacts

found in this strata are indicative of the Marine Station site occupation and

include modern glass, plastics, ferrous metal, styrofoam and ceramics. These

soils also include non-diagnostic artifacts such as unidentifiable glass, ferrous

metal, and wood. Soil 2 contains a concentration of wood, possibly a floor mat,

at a depth of approximately 31cm below the suface. These two units contain a

fairly extensive amount of bioturbation and small artifacts from later time

periods were likely pushed-up into these strata post-deposition.

2. Unknown/Transitional Fill [strata 4-11]: These strata extend from a depth of

approximately 40cm below the surface to a depth of 70-85cm below the

suface. They are associated with either the Boatworks Period of site occupation

or the Marine Station period of site occupation. The soil characteristics in this

layer vary quite significantly. Inclusions in this layer are quite common and

consist of roots, rock, charcoal, wood, and cement. There are also many

examples of non-continuous soil layers in this component (e.g. Soils 4, 5, 7,

and 9). Notable stratigraphic features from this component include Soil 6, a

soil that was possibly oxidized through burning but that did not include any

charcoal inclusions. Soil 8 is a heavily compacted soil that contains concrete

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 inclusions and compares favorably with the subsoil found in this unit (Soil 16),

suggesting that it may have been brought as fill from another area of the site.

Soil 10 is a heavily oxidized layer that includes large fragments of oxidized

iron and many charcoal fragments, many of the artifacts recovered from this

soil layer were burned. Artifacts recovered from this depositional period are

ambiguous and could be indicative of either the Boatworks or the Marine

Station periods of site occupation. Index artifacts found in these strata include

glass, plastic, ferrous metal, rubber, and ceramics. These soils also include non

diagnostic artifacts such as unidentifiable glass, ferrous metal, and wood. The

type and volume of the artifacts does not appear to change with depth and the

rare presence of small Chinese and modern artifacts can be explained by

bioturbation. The amount of non-continuous soils and the shallow depth of

these strata (relative to other units and other occupational periods in this unit)

suggests that these strata were either subjected to extensive post-depositional

disturbance or were brought in relatively small quantities from other areas of

the site or from offsite and were used as fill. Soil 8, for example, appears to be

subsoil from a nearby area.

3. Boatworks Occupation [stratum 12]. This component consists of a single soil

(12) that is firmly datable to the Boatworks occupational period fo the site.

Unlike the preceding soil layers (where the thickest soil, Soil 10, was 8cm

thick) it is relatively thick (between 12-30cm thick) and is a continuous

deposition with no major soil inclusions. It interfaces with the previous layers

at a depth of 52- 65cm and interfaces with Soil 13, the first soil that is

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 associated with the Chinese village, at a depth of 62-83cm below the surface.

The soil in this strata consists of a dry dark grayish brown, heavily compacted

silty sand (10yr 2/2 wet, 107r 4/2 dry). There is an extensive amount of wood

in this layer and at a depth of 62m we encountered a considerable number of

flat wood objects scattered throughout the unit. Other wood objects in this

strata included several large pieces of red-painted wood (likely associated with

boat construction) that remained lodged in the sidewall. Non-soil inclusions in

this layer were broadly similar to inclusions found in previous layers although

the strata was relatively free from concrete inclusions. These inclusions

consisted of wood, charcoal, roots, and rocks. Artifacts from this strata point

strongly towards a Boatworks Period occupation and include the

aforementioned wood, ceramics, ferrous metal, glass, and shell. This

component contains a much smaller degree of gopher bioturbation than other

occupational periods in this unit but there are several small gopher holes that

extend into the margins of this component, and small fragments of plastic,

styrofoam, and Chinese ceramics may have been pushed into this strata by

gophers after the original deposition of this component.

4. Chinese Layer [13-15] This occupation layer consists of three discrete soils

that represent the Chinese occupation of CA-MNT-104. Soils 13 and 15 are

continuous layers that both represent a clearly defined depositional period. Soil

14, though up to 16cm thick in places, was not continuous. The interface

between Soils 13 and 14 was difficult to apprehend and Soil 14 may not

necessarily represent a discrete depositional period. These soils together make

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an occupational deposition that is between 60cm and 86cm thick. They

interfaced with the Boatworks Occupation component at a depth of 62cm -

83cm. This component interfaces with the Subsoil component at a depth of

between 132cm and 160cm. Soils 13 and 14 consist of a moderately compacted

grayish brown soil. Soil 15 is a loose brown soil. Inclusions in this

occupational period are common and consist of rocks, shell, and wood.

Inclusions generally increased with depth. Soil 15 contained a particularly

large number of roots and organic material. There is a thin and distinct layer of

charcoal at the interface between Soils 15 and 16. There are signs of extensive

bioturbation in these strata; several large gopher holes extend through all soils

in this component. Large roots, up to a diamater of 4cm, are common

throughout the component but they are especially common in Soil 15. An

interesting feature was located at a depth of 120-130cm in unit N1054 E981.

There we found several large rocks in association with Chinese period artifacts

and a clear concentration of charcoal. It is possible that this deposition

represents artifacts burned during normal activities in the Chinese community

or that this feature represents one of the fires that swept through the Chinese

village. Artifacts recovered from this occupational period represent the best

preserved and largest number of Chinese-associated artifacts from CA-MNT-

104. This included a large number of artifacts that were clearly associated with

the Chinese occupation of the site such as ceramics, glass, small finds, metal,

and butchered faunal remains. The artifact concentration increased with depth.

Soil 15 contained the highest concentration of Chinese-associated artifacts in

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 the entire site. For an example of the concentration of large artifacts, see the

plan drawing associated with soil 12 [Figure 5.16]. In areas of this

occupational period that were significantly affected by bioturbation we

uncovered artifacts that were clearly associated with periods later than the

Chinese occupation. For example, a small piece of plastic was found at a depth

of 128cm in a gopher burrow that crossed Soil 15. Although the presence of

these small modern artifacts clearly demonstrates post-depositional activities

that challenge the integrity of the assemblage, it appears as though the total

number of artifacts that were redeposited through bioturbation is limited in

scope and volume. Many of the recovered artifacts were burned, partial, or

otherwise destroyed prior to deposition, suggesting that this feature represents

a general trash midden. A U.S. coin recovered from Soil 15 provides a solid

Terminus Post Quem of 1873.

5. Subsoil [16]. The subsoil interfaces with the Chinese Layer at a depth of

between 132cm and 160cm. It is composed of a well-sorted moderately moist

sand (80% sand, 10% silt, 10% clay) that was a light grayish color (10yr 4/1

wet, 10yr 5/1 dry). This soil contained no inclusions. Although there was

extensive bioturbation located just above this layer, there only seemed to be

minimal evidence of gopher disturbance in this soil. Although a small number

of Chinese-associated artifacts were recovered from this soil they were all

located at the interface with Soil 15 and can be accounted for by natural post-

depositional processes. An auger was placed in this strata at the bottom of unit

N0154 E981 and it was excavated to a depth of 100cm below the bottom of the

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 unit (260cm below surface/datum). The composition subsoil remained

consistant to that depth. At a depth of 260cm below the surface it was

determined that the soil was sterile and the decision was made to cease

excavation.

N1054 E981 AND N1054 E982 SUMMARY:

These two units were quite different from the other units excavated at CA-

MNT-104 in at least two major respects:

1. The stratigraphy was considerably more complex than in the other excavated

units. While most of the other archaeological units had two to six discrete

strata, these two units had at least fifteen distinct stratigraphic layers. Compare,

for example, N1054 E981 with N1012 E997.

2. They contain a concentration of Chinese period artifacts that is unparalleled in

units excavated to date. Despite the substantive differences from other units in

priority area 2, they can be broadly divided into the same occupational periods

that characterizes those units: The Marine Station, the Boatworks, and the

Chinese village. Within each of these broad occupational periods, bioturbation

and formation processes make finer temporal differentiation quite difficult. In

the modern and transitional periods, this area of the site appears to have been

used as a casual refuse dump. The concentration of artifacts from this period is

not significantly higher than in other areas of the site and is considerably less

dense than in areas near the Boatworks building. The Chinese occupational

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 layers, on the other hand, contain the highest concentration of intact Chinese

artifacts found on the site.

PRIORITY AREA 3

Priority area 3 [Figure 5.4] is located in a large open field near what was once

the Southern Pacific right of way (now a footpath). As previously detailed, test

excavations in this area revealed no intact archaeological remains from the Chinese

occupation of the site and this area was assigned a lower excavation priority than

previously mentioned areas. After excavating several units in priority area 2 (near the

coastline), we discovered that many of the intact Chinese deposits were found at a

depth below the depth to which the units in priority area 3 were excavated. We

decided to place two 1m X 1m units in this area in order to confirm that there were no

Chinese associated archaeological remains and to gain a firmer understanding of the

stratigraphic profile of this area of the site. In priority area 3 we opened the following

two units:

Unit: Size:

N1038 E943 (1m X 1m)

N1019 E946 (1m X 1m)

N1038 E943

This unit was located in a grassy area near the Southern Pacific right of way.

Historical maps and photographs indicate that this area was likely a yard or similar

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open area during the Chinese occupation of the site. This unit was excavated with

hand tools, including trowles, hand picks, shovels, and picks. It was excavated to a

depth of 70cm at which point the clay became too hard to pick through – even with

large picks. An attempt was made to auger at the bottom of the level but that proved

futile.

The unit contained five discrete strata:

1. Topsoil. This stratum extended from the surface to a depth of approximately

6cm below the surface. It contained inclusions of roots, bark, rocks, and grass.

Artifacts recovered are indicative of the Marine Station occupation of the site

and included glass, nails, and plastic.

2. Hard Silty Sandy Clay. This stratum extended from the interface with the

topsoil to a depth of 23-25cm below the surface. It was composed of a dry

silty sand (40% sand, 30% silt, 30% clay) that was munsel color 7.5yr/5 wet;

7.5yr /3 dry. It contained inclusions of roots and small rocks. No major

bioturbation was noted. Artifacts from this stratum appear to be primarily

associated with the Marine Station occupation of the site and included modern

plastics, ferrous metal, copper wire, and various ceramics.

3. Hard Gravel Clay. This stratum extended from its interface with the Hard Silty

Sandy Clay stratum to a depth of 42-50cm below the surface. This stratum was

composed of a hard clay (with extensive inclusions of gravel). There were

inclusions of roots found throughout the layer. Artifacts recovered from this

stratum are associated with the Marine Station occupation of the site and

include rubber hosing, styrofoam, plastic, and ferrous metal.

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 4. Gray Soft Silty Sand. This stratum extended from its interface with the Hard

Gravel Clay to a depth of approximately 65cm at which point an abrupt change

to the Grey Very Hard Clay stratum soil was present. Soil in this strata

consisted of a loose silty sand (50% sand, 40% silt, 10% clay) that was an ash-

gray color (7.5yr /5 wet; 7.5yr /3 dry). There were inclusions of roots, wood,

and rocks. Artifacts recovered from this stratum were associated with either the

Marine Station or the Boatworks Period occupations of the site. These artifacts

included glass, ceramics, and ferrous metal.

5. Gray Very Hard Clay: This stratum extended from the interface with the Gray

Soft Silty Sand layer to an unknown depth. We ceased excavation at a depth of

70cm when it became too difficult and time-consuming to excavate in this area

(even a large and sharp pick was unable to penetrate the clay soil). This soil

consisted of a dry clay (30% sand, 10% silt, 60% clay) that was very hard. This

stratum was free from inclusions and artifacts. There was no evidence of

bioturbation. An auger was placed at the bottom of this unit but we were

unable to penetrate the stratum.

N1038 E943 SUMMARY

This unit was composed of at least two, and possibly three separate

depositional phases. The first three strata were clearly associated with the Marine

Station period of site occupation. They were likely brought into the site as fill layers

for leveling and grading purposes. It is also possible that some of the artifacts in these

strata were deposited during the Boatworks Period of site occupation. The Grey Soft

270
Silty Sand stratum could have been deposited either during the Marine Station or the

Boatworks Periods of site occupation. The Grey Very Hard Clay stratum seems to be

sterile and is likely a natural substrata.

N1019 E946

This unit was located in a grassy area near the Southern Pacific right of way.

Like unit N1038 E943 it was placed in an area of the site that was associated with yard

activities during the Chinese occupation (activities such as the keeping of animals,

storage of fishing materials, abalone and squid drying and processing). This unit was

opened excavated to a depth of 130cm below the surface. It was excavated using hand

tools such as shovels, picks, trawls, and hand picks. Excavated soil was screened

through 1/4 inch mesh screen. At a depth of 130cm, we determined that the soil was

sterile and that further excavation would not be productive.

The stratigraphy in this unit can be divided into five discrete strata:

1. Topsoil. This stratum extends from the surface to a depth of approximately 11-

15cm below the surface. It consists of a dry and losly compacted silty sand

(75% sand, 20% silt, 5% clay). The soil is munsel color 7.5yr 3/1 wet; 10yr 4/1

dry. Inclusions are quite common in this layer and consist of widely distributed

and randomly oriented concrete chips, roots, and the decaying remains of small

shrubs. Artifacts clearly associated with the Marine Station and/or Boatworks

Periods of site occupation predominate in this layer and include styrofoam

fragments and modern glass fragments. Artifacts from an ambiguous period of

site occupation are also present including glass fragments and ferrous metal.

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 The transition between this stratum and the Moderately Compacted Fill 1

stratum is abrupt.

2. Moderately Compacted Fill 1. At a depth of between 11-15cm below the

surface, the Topsoil stratum gives way to a dry and moderately compacted

sand (95% sand, 3% silt, 2% clay – 7.5yr 3/1 wet; 10yr 4/2 dry). This soil

consisted of widely distributed inclusions of broken granite and fragments of

concrete. The quantity of roots, though present in the upper portions of this

stratum, diminishes with depth. A light grey sandy soil inclusions was present

at near the interface between this stratum and the Topsoil stratum. Artifacts

recovered from this inclusion were similar to artifacts recovered from the

stratum as a whole. Artifacts recovered from this stratum include artifacts that

are indicative of the Marine Station period of site occupation such as paper

labels and wrappers from modern food products. The stratum is noted for the

presence of burned material, including fire cracked rock, near the central

portion the unit at a depth of approximately 25cm below the surface. This

stratum extended to a depth of 30cm below the surface at which point it

interfaced with the Dark Compacted Fill stratum.

3. Dark Compacted Fill. This soil was located directly underneath the Moderately

Compacted Fill 1 stratum and extended to a depth of 63cm. It was a dry sandy

soil, well rounded and moderately compacted. The stratum contained

inclusions of several different soils that appear to be redeposited soils and fills.

The primary soil in this stratum was a highly compacted dry sand (7.5yr 3/1

wet; 2.5 4/1 dry). At 63cm this stratum which point it reaches an interface with

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 the Moderately Compacted Fill stratum. This stratum contained inclusions of

roots. Evidence of bioturbation, in the form of filled-in rodent burrows, was

also present. Artifacts recovered from this unit were related to the Boatworks

occupation of the site. A particularly notable object recovered from this

stratum was a large wooden boat fragment [Figure 5.17]. This object was so

large that we were unable to remove it and instead excavated around the

artifact.

4. Moderately Compacted Fill 2. At a depth of approximately 63cm we

encountered a soil characterized as a moderately compacted fill. This soil was

a dry sand with only slight silt. This stratum was significantly less compacted

than the stratum above. It is a grey color (7.5yr 3/1 wet; 7.5yr 4/2 dry). There

were some inclusions of charcoal found in this unit, but in general the layer

seemed relatively undisturbed by post depositional activities. Artifacts found in

the layer come from both the Boatworks and the Chinese occupations of the

site and include plastic, ferrous metal, shell, faunal remains, and Chinese

ceramics. The interface between this stratum and the Silver Sand stratum is

abrupt and discrete.

5. Silver Sand. At a depth of 90cm and extending to at least 130cm we

encountered a yellow hard sand with a moisture content that increased with

depth, ranging from dry at a depth of 90cm to very moist at a depth of 130cm.

This soil was very impacted and required extensive picking to excavate. This

soil was a grey/yellow color (7.5yr 4/1 wet; 7.5yr 6/1 dry). There were no

organic inclusions in this stratum. Evidence of bioturbation in the top layers of

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 this unit, in the form of filled-in gopher holes, were present. A small number of

Boatworks associated artifacts were found in association with these gopher

holes. No other cultural material was found in association with this stratum.

There were occasional inclusions of a dark clay soil found within this layer.

These inclusions appeared to be natural deposits. At a depth of 130cm the soil

became very difficult to pick through and, considering that the previous 40cm

of soil had been sterile, we decided to cease excavation and turn our attention

to more productive units in other areas of the stie.

N1019 E946 CONCLUSIONS

This unit contained at least two, possibly three depositional periods, none of

which appear to be directly associated with the Chinese occupation of the site. The

Topsoil stratum and the Moderately Compacted Fill 1 strata are clearly associated with

the Marine Station period of site occupation. The presence of the occasional artifact

from an older period found within the Moderately Compacted Fill 1 stratum suggests

that these soils were brought from another area of CA-MNT-104 or were fill brought

from off-site that was later combined with smaller quantities of soil from other areas

of CA-MNT-104. The strata located underneath these layers, the Dark Compated Fill

and the Moderately Compacted Fill 2, are most likely associated with the Boatworks

occupation of the site. The red-painted large wooden boat fragment is an example of

an artifact that is clearly indicative of the Boatworks Period of the site occupation. The

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Silver Sand layer is sterile, incredibly compacted, and was likely the result of natural

deposition prior to the Chinese occupation of the site.

PRIORITY AREA 3 CONCLUSIONS

Excavations near the fence line of the Hopkins Marine Station revealed scattered

archaeological evidence of Boatworks and Marine Statinon period occupations. There

was little evidence in this area of the Chinese occupation of CA-MNT-104. Artifacts

from the Chinese occupation of the site that were discovered in these units were

present in fill layers that were likely redeposited from other locations on-site. The

Silver Sand stratum was unlike the subsoil in regions of the site closer to the

waterfront, but appeared to be sterile.

NORTH OF THE BOATWORKS BUILDING

One excavation unit was placed north of the Boatworks building in survey area

4. Although work during the preliminary survey of the site indicated that this area had

a low research potential, the complex depositional processes at the site, the presence of

the occasional surface artifact in the area, and the desire to sample from a wider range

of locations prompted a single unit to be placed in the area. The unit was located on a

patch of cultivated grass directly north of the boat house.

Because of technical difficulties with the surveying equipment the location of

this unit was not recorded in the total station at the time of excavation. Instead,

measurements were taken from several longstanding buildings and features at the site.

After excavation a GPS reading was taken at the southwest corner of the unit.

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 Historical maps indicated that this area of the site was likely a yard during the

Chinese occupation of the area. This unit is unique among the excavated units because

it sits at the property line between the area of CA-MNT-104 owned by the Hopkins

Marine Station after 1906 and the area of CA-MNT-104 owned by the Monterey

County Boatworks after 1906.

This unit was excavated using hand picks and trowels. Excavated soil was

sifted through a 1/4 inch mesh screen. It was excavated to a depth of 68cm when rocks

made further excavation impossible.

The unit can be divided into four distinct strata.

1. Topsoil. At a depth of 3-5cm we encountered a fine sandy friable silt with low

moisture. This strata contained recently deposited artifacts such as styrofoam,

bottle glass, plastic, etc. This stratum had numerous inclusions of roots and

barks that slowly diminished with depth.

2. Root Mats. At a depth of 5-20cm we encountered a layer of fine sandy friable

silt with medium moisture. This stratum contained artifacts that appeared to be

from the Marine Station or Boatworks Periods such as ferrous metal, and glass.

The stratum was characterized by a large number of root inclusions.

3. Boatworks Period. At a depth of 20-40 we encountered a layer of fine sandy

friable silt with low moisture. This stratum contained artifacts that appeared to

be associated with the Boatworks phase of site occupation.

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NORTH OF THE BOATWORKS BUILDING SUMMARY

The materials recovered from this unit was consistant with a Boatworks Period

occupation. The few scattered artifacts associated with the Chinese occupation were

not substantive enough to justify further excavation in this area.

SUMMARY OF EXCAVATIONS

The following table summarizes the strata uncovered during excavation and

details the occupational layers associated with that particular stratum:

PRIORITY AREA 1

Unit: Stratum Name: Occupational Period:

N1074 E1014 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1074 E1014 2. Boatworks Period (1) Boatworks/Marine Station

N1074 E1014 3. Boatworks Period (2) Boatworks

N1074 E1014 4. Sterile Inclusion Subsoil

N1077 E1014 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1077 E1014 2. Boatworks Period Boatworks/Marine Station

N1077 E1014 3. Sandy Layer Subsoil

N1077 E1016 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1077 E1016 2. Boatworks Period Boatworks

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N1077 E1016 3. Clay Subsoil Subsoil

N1074 E1018 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1074 E1018 2. Grey Fill Boatworks/Marine Station

N1074 E1018 3. Dark Inclusion Boatworks

N1074 E1018 4. Red/Brown Fill Boatworks

N1074 E1018 5. Subsoil Subsoil

N1077 E1011 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1077 E1011 2. Dark Soil Boatworks/Marine Station

N1077 E1011 3. Sand Marine Station

N1077 E1012 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1077 E1012 2. Sand Marine Station

N1077 E1012 3. Dark Soil Boatworks/Marine Station

N1077 E1012 4. Light Soil Boatworks/Marine Station

N1077 E1012 5. Subsoil Same as 1074 E1018

UNDER THE BOATWORKS BUILDING

Unit: Stratum Name: Occupational Period:

Boatworks 1 1. Topsoil Marine Station

Boatworks 1 2. Strata 1 Unknown. Possibly Chinese

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Boatworks 1 3. Strata 2 Unknown

Boatworks 1 4. Subsoil Subsoil

Boatworks 2 1. Topsoil Marine Station

Boatworks 2 2. Hard Pack Unknown. Possibly Chinese

Boatworks 2 3. Dark Soil Unknown

Boatworks 2 4. Light Soil Unknown

Boatworks 2 5. Subsoil Subsoil

PRIORITY AREA 2

Unit: Stratum Name: Occupational Period:

N1012 E997 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1012 E997 2. Light Ash Soil 1 Boatworks/Marine Station

N1012 E997 3. Yellow Clay Fill Boatworks/Marine Station

N1012 E997 4. Light Ash Soil 2 Chinese

N1012 E997 5. Dark Impacted Soil Chinese

N1012 E997 6. Subsoil Subsoil

N1042 E980 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1042 E980 2. Dark Fill Boatworks/Marine Station

N1042 E980 3. Barnacle Layer Marine Station

N1042 E980 4. Dark Loam Chinese

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N1042 E980 5. Grey Subsoil Subsoil

N1054 E981/E982 1. Topsoil/Modern Fill Marine Station

N1054 E981/E982 2. Unknown/Transitional Fill Boatworks/Marine Station

N1054 E981/E982 3. Boatworks Occupation Boatworks

N1054 E981/E982 4. Chinese Layer Chinese

N1054 E981/E982 5. Subsoil Subsoil

PRIORITY AREA 3

Unit: Stratum Name: Occupational Period:

N1038 E943 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1038 E943 2. Hard Silty Sandy Clay Marine Station

N1038 E943 3. Gray Soft Silty Sand Boatworks/Marine Station

N1038 E943 4. Gray Very Hard Clay Subsoil

N1019 E946 1. Topsoil Marine Station

N1019 E946 2. Compacted Fill 1 Marine Station

N1019 E946 3. Dark Compacted Fill Boatworks

N1019 E946 4. Compacted Fill 2 Boatworks

N1019 E946 5. Silver Sand Subsoil

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NORTH OF THE BOATWORKS BUILDING [NOTBB]

Unit: 1. Stratum Name: Occupational Period:

NOTBB 2. Topsoil Marine Station

NOTBB 3. Root Mats Boatworks/Marine Station

NOTBB 4. Boatworks Period Boatworks

CONCLUSIONS

Archaeological research at the Point Alones Village was quite productive, but

not in the way originally envisioned. Prior to excavation, we had hoped to uncover

architectural features associated with known individuals (such as Tuck Lee) and

recover artifacts that would demonstrate the presence or absence of intra-site

differentiation. The ground disturbances, grading, and fill that was deposited after the

Chinese occupation of the site ensured that we would not achieve this level of spatial

and temporal resolution. Instead, we recovered several examples of intact trash

middens associated with the village as a whole, not discrete features associated with

an individual or known family. These artifacts, and their secure context, allow me to

explore how the real material culture used by village residents was tied into, built

upon, ignored, or refuted the stories told about the aesthetics and objects of the village

in the historical record.

Archaeological excavation at the site of the Point Alones Village forcefully

demonstrated that while the Pacific Improvement Company was able to evict the

Chinese residents of the village in 1907, they were not able to erase the material traces

of their experiences. Intact features associated with the Point Alones Village were

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found during excavations and were especially prominent in priortiy area 2. In addition

to recovering archaeological material from the village, the excavations also served to

bring attention to the history of the Chinese in Monterey. Regular tours of the

archaeological site were given to members of the media, school groups, community

groups, and descendants of Point Alones Village residents. The artifacts that were

uncovered and the context in which they were recovered provide the raw materials for

understanding a history of this community that takes into account objects and

aesthetics that may not have been materialized in historical text or 19th century

newspaper accounts. These artifacts also allow us to reconstruct elements of daily life

in the Point Alones Village, tying this ostensibly marginal and “out of the way”

community into powerful discourses. In the next chapters I analyze some of the

artifacts recovered from this excavation, unraveling their role in the creation of the

Point Alones Village and the Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans who lived

there.

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 CHAPTER SIX: COINS, MONEY, AND MATERIALITY

INTRODUCTION

There were very few coins found during my archaeological excavations at

Point Alones, and even fewer coins were excavated from strata that were clearly

associated with the Chinese American occupation (N=10). By number, mass, volume,

MNI, fragment, and every other quantitative measure these coins are an almost

insignificant portion of the assemblage. I begin my artifact analysis section with coins

for two primary reasons:

1. They provide an illustrative pathway into my understanding of the role that

circulation plays in the construction and contestation of identities, economies,

and relations of power. Coins, especially when used as money, circulate.

Nearly every theory of money takes circulation (even if that circulation is just a

theoretical possibility) as a given (Ingham 2005). In this section I discuss how

the circulation of coins and money (both the objects themselves and the

imaginations of the objects) recursively produced and continues to produce

certain social arrangements. Even when coins are not used as the money

commodity, as was most likely the case with the Chinese coins recovered from

the Point Alones Village, they still serve as nodal points for a variety of

significant discourses.

2. Despite their small numbers, these coins are at the center of the stories that

have been told about the Point Alones Village in both the past and in the

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 present. When asked if there were “interesting” looking artifacts for newspaper

photographers to feature, coins where usually the first example suggested. An

intense public interest in coins was a common theme as I conducted this

archaeological excavation and engaged with public. Museum exhibitions

displaying material from the Point Alones Village have all included at least

one Chinese coin in the exhibition. When presented with the suite of excavated

coins, the example that museum personnel and reporters usually focus on is a

particularly well-preserved example of a copper wen from the reign of the

Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722) (Artifact ID: 257). While sitting in my campus

cafe one day, I looked up at the wall and noticed a very large poster advertising

the “Stanford Fund.” This is an alumni organization dedicated to soliciting

donations from former Stanford University undergraduates. Unbeknownst to

me, the Stanford Fund had blown up a photograph of me holding a wen piece

(likely minted in the 1800s) with a caption “An anthropology student holds an

ancient Chinese artifact: a coin once called ‘cash.’ Over 82% of the money we

raise goes straight to financial aid.” In this depiction, the allure of money in the

past is directly connected to an appeal for money in the present through the

focus on this large exotic-looking coin.

A fascination with coins is not limited to an analysis and appraisal of already

discovered objects. Visitors to the archaeological site, from school children to

descendants of village residents, would regularly ask if we had found any Chinese

coins. Nor was this fascination limited to observers, visitors, reporters, and other

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members of “the public” not directly involved in the archaeological excavation.

Whenever a coin was recovered from a unit on-site, all work ground to a halt as all the

various participants in the archaeological investigation (including myself) gathered

around to try and make out what was found. These objects were immediately intensely

interesting. We all wanted to know: Was the coin American or Chinese? Did it have a

date on it? Was it made of copper? Silver? Gold?

Why do objects that are such a small part of the assemblage from a quantitative

perspective have such an oversized draw? What makes coins “special” and how has

that “specialness” changed over time? It’s clear that coins specifically, and the money

commodity more generally, are objects that exist at the center of dense webs of

signification. The potent symbolic power of money has long been recognized by

historians, anthropologists, and social theorists. In his famous account, Marx holds the

money commodity (no matter if that be gold or silver bullion, coins, or another object

altogether) as the quintessential fetish object - an object that has become “mysterious”

because it transforms the social character of labor into the “an objective character

stamped upon the product of that labor” (Marx 1976: 83). Graber puts the allure more

bluntly and expansively when he writes that “people create (‘make’) something; then

they act as if that thing has power over them” (Graber 2007: 137). Perhaps it is

because of their status as a fetish object par excellence that coins have become

exceptionally mysterious, interesting, desirable, and significant to both archaeologists

and to the lay public alike? But, contrary to Marx’s narrowly economic account, my

experiences sifting though the soil and archives in Monterey suggest that the coins I

excavated do (and did in the 19th and early 20th centuries) more than simply reflect a

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suite of social arrangements or an underlying “economic reality.” Instead, these coins

serve as a key nodal point through which hegemonic processes of social and economic

control are both symbolically and materially actuated.

These small bits of stamped (or in some cases cast) metal incite the

imagination and cement affective, social, and material connections between people.

What makes a coin mysterious and exciting is not merely, as Marx would have it, the

fact that it transforms the social character of labor into a tangible (and exchangeable)

object that, as the money commodity, serves as an economic master-signifier. Coins

are mysterious and exciting because they make real often overlapping and often

conflicting social constructions of desire, identity, affect, government, and self.

COINS AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Coins have long been a favored object of systematic study among historically

minded scholars. During the rise of modernity (Berman 1982; Habermas 1983; Hall

2000) there was a fluorescence of interest in collecting and systematically ordering

objects of various sorts (Chapman 1985; Findlen 1994; Impey and McGregor 2001;

Benedict 2001). Coin collecting was a significant component of this broader trend and

it become a very popular “gentleman’s hobby during the eighteenth century” (Trigger

1989: 74).

During the 19th century, organizations like the Royal Asiatic Society of Great

Britain and Ireland would regularly publish information about historical coins and they

often used their journals to highlight recent numismatic donations and descriptions of

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collections (e.g. Steuart 1837). For example, the first issue of the Journal of the

American Oriental Society included an anonymously authored discussion of the

potential contributions of numismatic study to the interpretation of history. Soon, a

plethora of organizations dedicated to the study and collection of coins, what the

American Numismatic Association called “the sciences of Numismatics” (The

Collector 1891: 7) were formed.

Links between the numismatists and the incipient discipline of archaeology

were commonplace. Many early archaeological techniques, such as typology and

seriation, were largely drawn from similar techniques in numismatics (Trigger 1989:

84). In what is perhaps their most obvious use, coins have been turned to as an

exemplary artifact for dating archaeological sites since the earliest days of the

discipline. Coins, particularly coins with a date stamped on them, serve as the

textbook example of a terminus post quim. For example, in the 18th century,

Cunnington used coins as a key index marker to separate historical period burial

mounds in Wilshire, England from prehistoric mounds (Trigger 1989: 67).

In historical archaeology, coins have been used to do more than simply date

sites. Another common early use of coins is as a marker for the wealth of a community

and its integration into broader economic systems. This approach is well demonstrated

in Heldman’s (1980) study of coins from the Michilmackinac fort, a French (and later

British) colonial fort in Northern Michigan. Heldman began by giving an overview of

French monetary policy, exploring how it constantly failed to provide enough coinage

to French colonial America to serve as a proper money commodity. He discusses how

colonists, as a result, often used non-coin objects as a money commodity, most

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notably cards. In his archaeological excavations, he explains that there were very few

French coins, only one of which could be clearly associated with the French (rather

than the British) occupation, found at the fort. He uses this as evidence to confirm the

historical narratives about the scarcity of money. Moving on to the British period, he

looks at the pattern of their distribution and notes that coins from assemblages

associated with French colonists who “chose to stay on” are rare compared to coins

from assemblages associated with the British military. He argues that this distribution

“implies low status generally for Frenchmen at Michilimackinac after 1761, for the

British who occupied the fort from that date on did possess coinage” (Heldman 1980:

106).

The two research strategies employed by Heldman: using excavated coins to

confirm the material effects of colonial monetary policy in a local setting and using

coins to infer relative wealth and status, are interesting and productive ways to use

excavated coins as a line of archaeological evidence. But, despite the fact that much of

Heldman’s article consists of describing the physical form and status of the coins,

these two approaches two practices share an elision of the materiality (Meskell 2004)

of the coins. The coins are seen not as objects with their own local and international

entanglements, objects with symbolic power, but are instead viewed as transparent

representations of a money commodity. Their overriding function in these accounts is

that they stood for an abstract value that, through a quantitative comparison, could

represent relative status (of the colony to the metropole in the case of the first

example, or of the dominant British to the impoverished French in the latter example).

Despite the values of this approach, later studies have demonstrated that coins do more

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than just blankly represent relative value. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that they

would be objects of such intense fascination were they only used in that abstract

capacity.

Coins are made to mean something more than mere abstraction at both their

moment of production and as they are used and reused. For example, when coins as

struck they are usually emblazoned with the symbols of state and concretely linked to

a sovereign authority. When they are commissioned it is with a particular trajectory of

circulation (or non-circulation) in mind. When coins are circulated they are often done

so with a mind to their materiality and they are often circulated in ways that could not

be predicted if they truly functioned merely as empty signifiers or as a metallic

commodity (Keane 2007).

Recently, historical archaeologists working in the United States have attempted

to untangle some of these other powerful uses to which coins were put. At the

forefront of this work has been archaeologists working with African American and

Chinese American communities. Wilkie (1997, 2000) provides a strong example of

this practice. In her excavations of the Oakley plantation in Louisiana she uncovered

coins from several depositional contexts. Like at Point Alones, the number of coins

uncovered represented a very small portion of the assemblage but, as she writes, “their

presence is significant and representative of a certain degree of freedom” (Wilkie

2000: 203). Wilkie does not take “freedom” to mean merely the monetary value of the

coin. Freedom is not simply the freedom to buy or consume. Instead, she looks at the

non-monetary contexts in which the coins may have circulated and the depositional

contexts in which they were recovered to argue that the coins were intertwined with

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other social, religious, and affective structures. Ultimately, she argues that the

deposition of these coins reveals particular kinds of social and personal identities. For

example, Wilkie describes how “one very common charm for turning away evil [in

African American communities was] a pierced coin worn on a string around the ankle

or neck” (Wilkie 1997: 89). In her excavations at the Oakley plantation, Wilkie found

pierced coins such as these and attributes them to African American spiritual practices.

Pierced coins of this sort have been found in contexts associated with African

Americans at other archaeological sites including the Andrew Jackson’s plantation, the

Hermitage (McKee 1993), where one pierced coin from the early 19th century was

found with a hole that “is drilled so that, when suspended, an image of an eagle on one

side of the coin hangs right-side up” (Russell 1997: 68). A find along these lines that

is particularly interesting from the perspective of overseas Chinese archaeology is a

copper Chinese coin (commonly called Wen) described by Amy Young at the Locust

Grove Plantation in Kentucky (Young 1997; Wilkie 1997). This coin is associated

with an African America deposit and Young “has interpreted these as having been

used like pierced coins from other site” (Wilkie 1997: 190). Chinese wen were

produced with a square hole in the middle and they would not need modification if

they were to be used in a similar fashion to other pierced coins.

One coin that Wilkie dwells upon at length is an “1855 English ‘Britannia’

penny with a hole punched through it” (Wilkie 2000: 189-191). This coin was

recovered from a context associated with the occupation of the Freemans, an African

American family living at Oakley plantation. Wilkie writes that “The most notable

feature of the coin is not its foreign manufacture but its date, 1855, which corresponds

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to the year of Silvia Freeman’s birth. This hardly seems to be a coincidence and

strongly suggest the charm has belonged to Silvia.” (Wilkie 2000: 191). Wilkie

interprets this coin as a “birth coin,” of the sort discussed by Puckett (1926) who wrote

of “silver dimes bearing the birth year of the wearer being kept in the toe end of

shoes” (Wilkie 2000: 190).

In these African American contexts, coins are used not simply as a useful

token to stand in for the money commodity. Instead, they are actively incorporated

into other powerful and meaningful cultural productions. But casually tying uses of

coins by racialized individuals and communities to a non-economic or spiritual realm

has the potential to mislead. Fennell notes that:

African Americans reportedly believed that tying a piece of silver with a hole
in it to one’s leg could create protection from malevolent forces. Pierced silver
coins, including dimes, were used for this purpose, and were often worn on the
ankle or as a necklace. One could also place a silver coin or penny (presumably
without piercing it) in one’s stocking or shoes to achieve the same result
(Fennell 2000: 287).

Fennel also explains how archaeologists so commonly connected pierced coins

with African American spiritual practices that they are used as ethnic index markers.

He warns against associating coins-as-charms too closely with “non-White racialized

others,” explaining that when:

The artifact is interpreted as an expression of divination, conjuration, or folk

religion practices, the initially laudatory effort to link it to African Americans
may impose unintentional stereotypes on that group as the only group one

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 would expect to have practiced such ‘magic’ in colonial and antebellum
America. We should seek more than corroborative evidence in support of one
interpretation. We should also ask whether the item could have been
comparably meaningful to the other ethnic groups that may have inhabited the
area (Fennell 2000: 285).

In a related vein, Fennell explains how coins were used contemporaneously by

white Americans as charms. As he writes: “The English used votive coins as charms.

A person working this charm typically used a coin that was minted as currency, and

bent it to convert it from usable currency into an object offered in supplication for

protection or cures from a chosen saint or other spiritual force” (Fennell 2000: 287).

Folk beliefs about coins continue in white American communities up to the present

day. For example, as I was growing up I was taught that if one picks up an obverse-

side-up coin from the ground then one is sure to receive good luck. On the other hand,

if the reverse side is facing up, then one needs to leave the coin lying on the ground or

face bad luck. Another tradition that I was taught when I was young is that throwing

coins into bodies of water (wells, ponds, fountains) brings good luck. The use of coins

as charms was present in Greek and Roman antiquity, as when “A single low-

denomination coin is placed in the mouth at the time of death to pay Charon’s fare”

(Stevens 1991: 216). Indeed, what I have not been able to find is a society or culture

that had coinage where the coins were not used for social and spiritual purposes

beyond the coin’s position as a money commodity. But the question remains: Why are

coins such a powerful and polyvalent object?

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TERMINOLOGY RELATED TO ASIAN COINS COMMONLY FOUND AT

OVERSEAS CHINESE SITES

Before I explain how Chinese or Asian coins have been theorized by

archaeologists, detail the various coins recovered at the Point Alones Village, and

discuss the social, political, and monetary context into which these coins were

interpolated, I will briefly discuss the different types of Asian coins that are most

commonly found at overseas Chinese sites and some of the terminology used by

historians and archaeologists to describe these coins and their associated monetary

systems. These coins each have a different historical trajectory and their presence (or

absence) in any given context can suggest temporal and social associations.

Throughout the history of China and across Asia there have been an untold number of

coins minted and this typology does not pretend to do more than list those types most

relevant for understanding coins that may be present at overseas Chinese communities:

1. Chinese wen (文) (also called cash). These are the Asian coins that are most

commonly found in 19th century overseas Chinese communities in North

America. Wen coins were cast coins. Olsen writes that the wen coins:

Most frequently occur in archaeological sites in North America in the

form of small (generally 19-25 mm in diameter) metallic discs bearing

the characteristic square perforation [...] present as a result of finishing

the coins to remove casting imperfections (Beals 1980: 58; Grierson

1975), as a means of conserving metal in cast coins (Burger 1976:32),

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 and to provide a method of stringing large quantities of cash together to

facilitate handling (Olsen 1983: 41).

Unlike some other Asian produced coins and forms of Chinese currency, brass

or copper wen were primarily cast by the imperial government at official mints.

These coins were originally introduced during the Han dynasty (206 BCE –

220 CE). The coins were quite common throughout Chinese history and they

were “used in everyday transactions by the Chinese until the fall of their last

dynasty in 1911” (Whitmore 1983: 365). The imperial government’s continued

attempts to fix value of the wen to the price of silver were rarely effective, as is

evident in the statements of the Chinese Qianlong emperor (1736-1795) who

wrote: "We think that uniformity of the price of copper cash (in terms of the

silver tael) cannot be expected to exist among the different counties. And even

in a small town, the price of copper cash differs in the morning and in the

evening" (quoted in Chen 1975: 361). In historical and contemporary literature

these coins (and others like them) are often referred to as cash. Akin and Akin

write that “The European term for a single-unit Chinese coin is ‘cash,”’

provably derived from the Tamil word kas for a copper coin of small value”

(Akin and Akin 1987: 416). Greenwood et al point out that this is an entirely

etic term and that “The word cash was never used by the Chinese themselves”

(Costello et al. 2008: 143) [See Figure 6.1 for examples of wen coins]

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2. Chinese tael (兩). This was a traditional Chinese unit of weight and a currency

standard. Kann explains that “the tael as currency unit was widely used in

China, but never universally as coin” (Kann 1954: 315). The precise

measurement of the tael varied over time, but it appears to have floated at

around 1.3 oz. Chen (1975) has offered 1.33 oz. as the approximate

measurement. Lai et al. point to the terms of the treaty resulting from the 1894

Sino-Japanese war when China was required to pay war reparations “it was

decided for that special purpose that the Kuping tael [the official tael] was

575.82 grains” (Lai et al. 2009: 41), a number that they translate as 1.32 oz.

3. Chinese sychee tael (silver tael). A sychee tael is a cast silver ignot. Although

China has often flirted with other money commodities, including paper and

bamboo (Lin 2006: 36-37), Flynn and Giraldez report that “by the fifteenth

century, the people had rejected paper in favor of silver which they regarded as

a more reliable unit of account and medium of exchange” (Flynn and Giraldez

(1997: 282). Unlike wen coins, sychee tales were privately cast and were used

for wholesale transactions, the payment of taxes, and other occasions when

large amounts of money changed hands.

4. Vietnamese dong. During the 19th century, Vietnamese dong coins were

minted by both the Vietnamese imperial government and by the French

colonial government (Costello et al 2008). These coins were minted in both

brass and zinc form. The dong coins were “worth even less than wen, and

doing coins mad of zinc were even less valuable than those made of brass

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 (Costello et al. 2008: 148). Greenwood describes how dong coins are

physically unstable: “Zinc dong are a grayish white when first cast, but soon

take on a darker color, oxidize very easily, and are not as attractive as the brass

or copper coins. They are readily damaged by fire and deteriorate rapidly in

soil” (Greenwood 1993: 82). Even though these coins were produced in Viet

Nam, they circulated in China. As Costello et al (2008: 145) report, many of

these Zinc coins were imported to Guangdong to replace copper and brass

Chinese produced wen coins during an acute currency shortage that occurred in

the 1880s. By the 1890s, the currency shortage was alleviated and “within a

few years the market for the Vietnamese coins disappeared. The abandonment

of the dong in China was rapid and complete, as everyone (even in Vietnam)

always preferred the brass or other copper-alloy coins to those of zinc”

(Costello et al. 2008:145).

CHINESE COINS IN NON-CHINESE NORTH AMERICAN CONTEXTS

In addition to Young’s (1997) discovery of Chinese coins at Locust Grove

Plantation contexts, these coins have been found in numerous other non-Chinese

contexts. Indeed, the entry of large numbers of Chinese coins into North America

predated the entry of larger numbers of Chinese individuals into North America. As

Singleton notes: “Native American artists decorated objects with Chinese coins and

European beads, even before the Europeans came to their lands” (Singleton 1990: 948)

Beals explains how “Probably the earliest instance connecting Asian coins with

Northwest Coast Indians concerns a shipwreck purported to have occurred in the first

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half of the 1700s just south of the Columbia River mouth” (Beals 1980: 61). The

presence of Chinese coins on the Northwest Coast was recorded by at least “two

eighteenth century explorer accounts,” both of who mentioned the use of Asian coins

for decorative purposes (earrings in one case, ornamentation for clothing in the other).

The coins continued to be put to use by Native Americans after Chinese individuals

arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Beals writes about how “a specimen of Tlingit

leather armor in the Smithsonian collection, cataloged in 1870, is covered with over

200 Chinese coins” (Beals 1980: 62).

Another accession in the Smithsonian (Acc. No. 13804.) reports about a Haida

“dancing skirt with puffin beaks and Chinese coins” that was acquired by James Swan

in July, 1883. On the accession remarks, the collector wrote that an “ancient work was

trimmed when new with puffin beaks and Chinese copper coins” and that “Chinese

copper coins were brought from Canton by traders 100 years ago and were very

common among the coast tribes who trimmed their blankets with them.” A striking

example of Native American incorporation of Chinese coins into cultural material is a

“Chilkat (Tlinkit)” mask collected by Lt. T. Dix Bolles in 1886 the uses Chinese coins

for eyes. Although Chinese coins were perhaps most commonly used by Native

Americans in the Pacific Northwest, the use of coins was not confined to these groups.

There is at least one artifact cataloged in the Smithsonian as being from the “Plains”

that reads “BEADWORK ON SHOULDERS, ARMS, CHINESE COINS,

ASSINIBOINE” (Catlaog # ET14884-0).

The presence of Chinese coins being used as decorative elements on these

Native American artifacts clearly demonstrates that there was (at least indirect) trade

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and exchange between Native Americans and the Chinese even prior to mass Chinese

immigration to the United States and Canada. It also demonstrates that the historic

value of Chinese coins is not reducible to an exchange value and that these specific

coins could serve as something other than the money commodity. Although

archaeologists have tended to analytically separate these circulations of Chinese coins

from the later circulations of Chinese coins more directly associated with overseas

Chinese communities, I suggest that the value of these Chinese coins in early trade is

similar in form to the value of Chinese coins in later trade and that that presence of

Chinese coins in North America predating the presence of Chinese individuals was

another node through which Asian and Chinese identity was imagined by non-Chinese

North American individuals.

CHINESE COINS AT OVERSEAS CHINESE SITES

The allure of coins for archaeologists working on overseas Chinese sites

extends far beyond the excitement generated by the finds at Point Alones. In the early

years of overseas Chinese archaeology, articles about overseas Chinese archaeology

tended to be articles about coins found on overseas Chinese sites. Voss and Allen, for

example, explain how, as of 2008 “In 39 years of publication, the journal Historical

Archaeology has published only 10 articles on overseas Chinese archaeology, 4 of

which are studies of Chinese coins” (Voss and Allen 2008: 18). The heavy emphasis

on analyzing and publishing information about coins found during archaeological

excavations seems greater in papers about the overseas Chinese than with other topics.

For example, in Historical Archaeology there are very few articles that focus

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exclusively on coins that were not from an overseas Chinese context (see Heldman

1980, previously discussed above, for a notable exception). Articles about Chinese

coins published in Historical Archaeology and elsewhere that move beyond simply

using the objects for dating purposes tend to focus on a number of key issues: They

often begin by asking if these coins served as the money commodity within the

overseas Chinese community. If they suspect that the coins did not actively circulate

as currency, they ask what the coins were used for. Here, the most common answers

are that the coins were used for talismanic purposes or that the coins were used as

gambling pieces.

Archaeologists working on overseas Chinese sites have long been employing

sophisticated and nuanced understandings of the active role that coins can play in a

society and the various non-currency uses that the coins have been put to. Much of this

debate and discussion centers around the question of whether or not these coins were

used as currency - be it a currency largely disarticulated from the dominant money

commodity or be it a currency that circulated alongside the money commodity.

Although debate about the topic began by simply asking the question of ‘whether,’ in

recent years it has expanded to include the question of ‘why’ and, perhaps more

significantly, scholars have begun to ask about the possible multiplicity of uses that

these coins might have been put to in the past.

A good introduction to this debate in overseas Chinese archaeology is Farris’s

(1979) Historical Archaeology article “‘Cash’ as currency: Coins and Tokens from

Yreka Chinatown.” In this article Farris provides an overview of debates and

discussions in studies of Chinese Coins at North American archaeological sites. He

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discusses how in previous coin studies, the objects were “seldom used as more than

terminus post quem dating devices” (Farris 1979: 48). Farris argues that when coins

are “found in abundance, and when they derive from a context demonstrating the

interaction of two cultures, they may also yield important economic and cultural

information” (Farris 1979: 48). He analyzes 141 Chinese, Vietnamese, Hong Kongese,

and American coins as well as two “local merchants tokens” that were found during

the 1969 excavations of the Yreka Chinatown (1875-1930). Farris explicitly echos

Hattori’s (1979) arguments that Chinese coins in Lovelock were used as in-group

money when he explains that the Chinese “cash” coins had a value “at between a mill

and a fifth of a cent” (Farris 1979: 50) which would have “facilitated the pricing of

low-value items” and benefit local merchants because they “would not have circulated

outside the community.” Farris doubts that the coins were used for “for talismanic

purposes” because they “represent mainly the common reigns and mints” (Farris 1979:

50). Ultimately, Farris’s article hinges on the question of whether or not the Chinese

coins at Yreka were circulated as the money commodity. Toward this end he follows

Kleeb’s (1976) hypothesis that large concentrations (hordes) of Chinese coins found in

a single context alongside with non-Chinese coins suggests that the coins were used as

currency. Because he found large numbers of both Chinese and non-Chinese coins in a

single context, he concludes that the coins at Yreaka likely did circulate but with the

caveat that they were possibly used as “intra-community token currency of small

value” (Farris 1979:48).

The Farris article is particularly interesting because he understands that coins

are more than a convenient tool for archaeologically dating contexts or establishing

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ethnic identity. Instead, he recognizes that coins played an active role in mediating

social and economic interactions. Because the Chinese coins would not have been

accepted as a money commodity outside of the Chinese community, his argument

paints a picture of a Chinese community where at least some of its members existed

within two distinct economic spheres. There are important social implications to the

argument that Chinese communities circulated one money commodity in intra-group

settings and another money commodity in their interactions with non-Chinese. In

many ways, this argument is similar to the argument made by Praetzellis and

Praetzellis (2001) who use ceramic evidence from the Sacramento Chinatown to argue

that the Chinese merchant class served as kind of “middleman” between the Chinese

community and their non-Chinese neighbors. According to Praetzellis and Praetzellis,

merchants strategically manipulated “symbols of gentility” through “dinners, open

houses, and other staged events that involved displaying items of popular Victorian

material culture in their public rooms” so that “Euro-Americans began to recognize

the class divisions within the Chinese population and the high cultural sophistication

of the wealthy” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001: 649) As is implied in Farris’s

arguments about coins, according to Praetzellis and Praetzellis, Chinese merchants

likely used “material culture for the purpose of impression management and, we might

suggest, for the expression of his identity as a Chinese American. Yet [they] supplied

[their] workers with exclusively Chinese food, medicine, and entertainment,

effectively preventing them from following the path to self-advancement in the New

World” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001: 649). If coins were circulated as the money

commodity, but only within the Chinese community, could this be seen as another

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example of Chinese merchants strategically manipulating another ‘symbol of gentility’

to gain cultural capital among non-Chinese individuals while maintaining a business

monopoly within the Chinese community? Although the question of circulation hasn’t

been finally settled, there have been recent studies that forcefully challenge this

theory.

Critically important in Farris’s paper is how, in addition to his economic

analysis (what was the economic value of these coins and how did that influence their

articulation or disarticulation form wider economies?), he also recognizes the

possibility that coins were used for something other than a money commodity - as

‘talismans’ - although he dismisses that particular use in the context that he analyzes.

This point was debated Neville Ritchie and Stuart Park in their 1987 article

“Chinese Coins Down Under: Their Role on the New Zealand Goldfields.” This paper

is largely a reaction against accounts of the overseas Chinese that take for granted the

currency nature of the Chinese coins found on archaeological sites. Although their

work is based upon research conducted in New Zealand, its insights are relevant to

archaeologists studying the overseas Chinese in North America. In their article,

Ritchie and Park reiterate the difficulty in using Chinese cash coins to date overseas

sites. As they explain, these coins remained in circulation for centuries and the coins

“found in overseas Chinese contexts usually considerably pre-date their date of

deposition. The majority of those found in overseas Chinese sites were struck during

the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1644-1911) but occasionally specimens are uncovered which

are up to 1000 years old” (Ritchie and Park 1987: 49). Ritchie and Park argue that

cash was very unlikely to have been used as currency outside of China. Contributing

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factors to this argument include: “Firstly, cash had a low intrinsic value. In 1907,

approximately 10,000 cash were worth one pound sterling” (Ritchie and Park 1987:

49). They note that cash coins were not found in the numbers necessary to be a viable

money commodity when placed alongside British (or American) currency.

Continuing their argument, Ritchie and Park suggest that “A further

consideration concerns the complexity of the monetary system in China. It is unlikely

in the extreme that any overseas Chinese community could have replicated the

complicated system of checks and balances, which were an integral part of the

mainland Chinese monetary system” (Ritchie and Park 1987: 45). Their final piece of

evidence is the lack of historical records suggesting that the Chinese in New Zealand

were using cash as currency. They write that “it is inconceivable that the Chinese

could have operated closed money systems within the goldfield communities without

someone commenting on such practices. In fact, if there had been any evidence

suggesting such practices, anti-Chinese agitators would almost certainly have used it

to arouse further opposition to Chinese immigration” (Ritchie and Park 1987: 45).

Citing ethnographic evidence collected by Stuart Culin, they suggest that the cash

coins were instead “imported into New Zealand, the United States, and elsewhere, for

use as part of the equipment for playing fan tan, or as gambling tokens” (Ritchie and

Park 1987: 45). They point to historical evidence that suggests that fan tan was played

with “European currency” as “stake money” but that Chinese cash served as the

primary tokens.

Turning to a case study, Ritchie and Park discuss a dwelling where Chinese

cash coins were found in a single context with small denomination British coins.

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Instead of following Kleeb’s argument that this association suggests that the coins

circulated as currency, they posit that “the Chinese coins are more likely to have been

used as non-monetary game pieces or counters, rather than money. The European

coins may represent lost stake money” (Ritchie and Park 1987: 46).

Despite their argument that the majority of Chinese cash coins imported to

New Zealand were used as gaming pieces, they do not exclude the possibility that

some coins might have been used “as good luck pieces, talismans, or ornaments”

(Ritchie and Park 1987: 46). Additionally, they suggest that some coins might have

been used to decorate “Chinese swing baskets” - baskets affixed with Chinese coins

that were used by Europeans and North Americans (though, Ritchie and Park explain,

there is no evidence that New Zealanders used the baskets).

Ritchie and Park conclude their argument with several suggestions about why

the coins were imported to be used as gambling tokens. Their primary suggestion is

that “Long-standing superstitions and ‘avoiding bad luck,’ may have been primary

otivations for using cash in this fashion” (Ritchie and Park 1987: 46). Other

suggestions are that the coins were originally imported with the “belief that they could

be used as currency, cash retained for spending on an individual’s return to China,

cash brought out for talismanic or personal reasons, and cash used as decorations on

imported artifacts” (Ritchie and Park 1987: 47). They argue that cash is often found at

overseas Chinese archaeological sites for a variety of reasons, including:

The obsolescence of cash following the closure of gambling establishments,

the abandonment of low-value possessions (which appears to have frequently
included cash) when a miner moved and his hut was vacated, the complete

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 abandonment of individual huts and their contents when owners died, and cash
(together with other possessions) which were lost in the rubble when a
structure was accidentally or deliberately burnt down (Ritchie and Park 1987:
47).

Ritchie and Park conclude with a warning that an archaeologist should not

necessary infer that the presence of cash indicates a gambling site but that “the

possibility should always be considered” (Ritchie and Park 1987: 47).

A third representative article that charts the debate about the use of coins in

overseas Chinese contexts is Akin’s (1992) article “The Noncurrency Functions of

Chinese Wen in America” published in Historical Archaeology. This article suggests

that the focus by archaeologists on the question of economic circulation may obscure

many other uses of these coins. Akin begins by noting that Chinese individuals were

not the only people importing these coins into the United States, but she distinguishes

between these non-Chinese importations and Chinese importations (a distinction that I

would not be so quick to make, as I explain in the analysis portion of this section). The

Chinese uses to which the wen coins were put, and that Akin describes, include

“talismanic, gambling, decorative, and medicinal” (Aiken 1992: 59) as well as

construction. She concludes by suggesting that “although the coins were used for

many things, their use as circulating currency was not among them” (Aiken 1992: 59).

A brief summary of each of these uses is both interesting and important:

1. Talismanic purposes that Aiken discusses include “coin swords” (coins tied

together into the shape of a small sward and used to bring luck), “protective

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 charms consisting of several wen tied together with a red string,” and as

“money” scattered during a funeral. Each of these uses is corroborated by Akin

using historical and ethnographic evidence including observations of Chinese

activities in non-Chinese period newspapers and interviews with Chinese and

non-Chinese individuals.

2. Aiken also covers the use of these coins in gambling. This argument is very

similar to Ritchie and Park’s argument and Aiken uses both references to Culin

(1891) and descriptions of Chinese gambling from 19th century San Francisco

newspapers to support the hypothesis that coins were used as tokens in

gambling even though “the betting was conducted in other forms of currency”

(Aiken 1992: 61).

3. Aiken highlights the use of coins as “decoration.” This includes both the

previously mentioned “sewing baskets” and items for other non-Chinese

individuals as well as “personal items, such as keychains” (Aiken 1992: 62)

that Aiken suggests were kept “probably for their talismanic or sentimental

value” (Aiken 1992: 62).

4. A fourth use that the coins may have been put to is classified by Aiken as

“medical.” Although she argues that there is no direct archaeological evidence

for the use of wen for medicinal purposes, “the use of coins in traditional

medical treatments in China is, however, well documented” and

“contemporary Chinese Americans, and ethnic Chinese Vietnamese

Americans, still engage in some of these practices” (Aiken 1992: 62). These

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 practices include rubbing or scraping the body with the coin in order to cure

various ailments and grinding up and boiling zinc and bronze coins in order to

make a medicinal tea or for topical medicine.

5. Finally, Akin argues that the wen were used as hardware. She points to an

example where “an iron hinge which used two ‘Chinese “cash” coins’ for

washers is reported to have been recovered from the Chinese railroad labor

camp at Langtry, Texas, a site occupied in 1882” (Aiken 1992: 63).

In her conclusions, she argues that careful analysis of depositional context

might help archaeologists unravel which of these uses the coins were put to in a given

site. Interestingly, she returns back to the money commodity function of these coins in

her conclusion when she writes that “with the only source for wen located across the

Pacific Ocean, these uses must have kept in demand, and thus the price, high enough

to serve as a block to the coins circulating as money” (Aiken 1992: 64). According to

this formulation, the possibility for the coins to return to their position as an “empty”

measure of value is always present even in contexts where the coins could not have

served as the money commodity.

Although Akin and Ritchie both present convincing arguments for the non-

circulation as currency of these Chinese wen and Vietnamese dong pieces, the

question of whether or not cash was used as a freely circulating currency in North

America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is one that may never be entirely

settled. For example, Fosha (2004: 65) has recently argued that Chinese coins found at

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the Deadwood Chinatown in South Dakota were primarily used as “a traditional

medium of exchange for purchasing native goods from local Chinese merchants.”

In recent discussions of overseas Chinese archaeology, Akin’s work on coins

has been expanded and elaborated upon. In particular, Costello et al. (2008) have

moved past simple reflections about what the coins might have been used for in a local

context and have turned to interpretations that trace the political economy that

accounts for the trajectory of specific types of Asian coins and their entry into North

American (and other overseas Chinese communities). These authors explain how a

shortage of low denomination coins in Southern China during the 1880s resulted in

Chinese bankers importing Vietnamese zinc coins (minted by the French colonials) for

use as currency (Costello et al. 2008). This continued until 1889 when “the Chinese

government mint in Canton began production of high-quality machine-struck brass

when,” resulting in the “rapid and complete” removal of zinc coins from circulation

(Costello et al. 2008: 144). Despite the fascinating historical and political trajectory of

these coins, and the potential theoretical implications of this political economy,

Costello et al. quickly return to an instrumental analysis of these historical facts when

they posit that their primary implication for archaeologists is as a useful method for

dating archaeological sites. As they argue: “if Vietnamese dong coins are found at a

Chinese archaeological site, it is fairly certain that they were imported between about

1885 and the late 1890s when the coins were in wide circulation in Guangdong

Province” (Costello et al. 2008: 144).

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POINT ALONES VILLAGE COINS

Moving beyond attempting to understand what they coins were used for, I hope

to understand what they coins did in local and global contexts. That is to say, I want to

understand how the coins uncovered at the Point Alones Village articulated with larger

global discourses about money, economy, and identity. What is it about these coins

that make them particularly suitable objects for such a wide variety of uses (as

outlined in Akin 1992) - especially when other kinds of objects (ceramics, nails,

washers, etc…) would likely have been less expensive and more readily available to

the residents of the Point Alones Village? I will begin by outlining the various coins

uncovered at the Point Alones Village.

During the Point Alones Village archaeological research project a total of 10

coins were found in Chinese contexts. Because the coins are varied in terms of style

and depositional context, a thorough discussion of each individual coin will be useful

for purposes of this analysis. For a more thorough description of the depositional

contexts of these various strata, see Chapter 5. I have not included in this discussion

the coins (Late 20th and early 21st century U.S. small change) that were found in

contexts that post-dated the Chinese occupation of the Point Alones Village:

1. ID: 947 N1054 E981. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from a context rich

in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the Point

Alones Village. It is a round brass coin 20 mm in diameter and 2 mm thick. It

has a mass of 4.15 grams. It is heavily corroded and no diagnostic features can

be seen on the obverse or the reverse of the coin. Although the origin of the

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 coin is unidentifiable, it does not have a hole in the middle and is likely a non-

Asian coin [Figure 6.2]

2. ID: 1951 N1052 E981. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from a context

rich in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the

Point Alones Village. It is a round brass coin 22.5 mm in diameter and 1.6 mm

thick. It has a mass of 3.5 grams. It is heavily corroded and no diagnostic

features can be seen on the obverse or the reverse of the coin. It has a square

hole in the center and is most likely an Asian coin, probably a Chinese wen

[Figure 6.3].

3. ID: 1952 N1054 E 981. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from a context

rich in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the

Point Alones Village. It is a round silver alloy coin 18mm in diameter and it is

1.3mm thick. It has a mass of 2.56 grams. It is heavily corroded but a seated

liberty can be made out on the obverse and a single word “one” is visible on

the reverse. This implies that the coin is a “seated liberty” dime. The seated

liberty dime was a United States coin minted between 1837 and 1891. These

coins were 90% silver and 10% copper. They were minted in Philadelphia, San

Francisco, Carson City, and New Orleans [Figure 6.4].

4. ID: 1953 N1054 E981. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from a context

rich in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the

Point Alones Village. It is a round silver alloy coin 18mm in diameter and

1.3mm thick. It has a mass of 2.48 grams. The coin is solid and there is no hole

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 in the middle. It is very heavily corroded and no distinguishing features can be

seen on either the obverse or the reverse. It compares favorably to (ID: 1460

and ID: 1954) in mass, size, and context. With this in mind, it is very likely

that this coin was a seated liberty dime but a definitive identification cannot be

made [Figure 6.5].

5. ID: 1954 N1054 E981. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from a context

rich in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the

Point Alones Village. It is a round cuprous coin. There is no hole in the center.

It measures 18mm in diameter and is 1mm thick. It has a mass of 2.48g.

Although the coin is corroded, a seated “liberty” figure with a date of 1869 can

be seen on the obverse of the coin. The reverse of the coin is corroded and no

distinguishing features are identifiable. In 1869 the United States government

produced this coin at both the Philadelphia and San Francisco mints.

6. ID: 1955 N1054 E982. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from stratum 13, a

depositional period associated with the Point Alones Village. It is a round

silver alloy coin 18mm in diameter and it is 13mm thick. It has a mass of

2.48grams. A seated liberty figure with the date of 1873 can be clearly

identified on the obverse and the words ‘one dime’ can be clearly identified on

the reverse. The date is accompanied by arrows, indicating that this coin was

struck after the Coinage Act of 1873 went into law, changing the mass of the

dime from 2.49 to 2.5 grams. The Coinage Act maintained the silver to copper

ratio stable at 90% silver and 10% copper. These coins were produced in

Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Carson City. The area where a mint mark

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 might be observable is tarnished beyond recognition [Figure 6.6 for detail of

“seated liberty” see Figure 6.7].

7. ID: 948 N1054 E981. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from a context rich

in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the Point

Alones Village. It has a diameter of 15.2mm and it is 1.2mm thick. It has a

mass of .75g. It is a small round bronze Asian coin with a high copper content

and has a small round (not square) hole in the middle. On the obverse the

characters “qian, yi” (meaning “thousand, one”) are visible running left to right

and the character “xiang” is visible on the top of the coin. The bottom

character is heavily corroded and it unidentifiable, but from the extant

characters it is clear that this a Hong Kong (Xiang Gong) 1 mil coin. These

coins were manufactured in Hong Kong and were valued at 1/10 of a cent

(1,000 mill was worth 1 Hong Kong dollar). These coins were only

manufactured for four years: 1863-1866. The date should be on the reverse of

the coin, but that side is highly corroded and no identifying dates or features

can be read. 1863 was the first date that the Hong Kong dollar was introduced.

The Hong Kong mint shut down in 1868 after which private banks printed and

circulated notes that served as the local money commodity [Figure 6.8].

8. ID: 1592 N 1054 E982. Stratum 12. This coin was recovered from a context

rich in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the

Point Alones Village. It has a diameter of 21mm and it is 2.3 mm thick. It has

a mass of 2.13g. It is a round Asian coin with a square hole in the middle. It is

a copper-alloy, almost certainly bronze. The coin is heavily corroded and no

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 distinguishing features can be read on the obverse or the reverse. Before

cleaning, there appeared to be burned material fused to the body of the coin.

Ferrous metal has also corroded into the coin. This coin is most likely a

Chinese wen piece [Figure 6.9].

9. ID: 257 N1012 E997. Stratum 6. This coin was recovered from a context rich

in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the Point

Alones Village. It is a round brass coin approximately 24 mm in diameter and

2.5 mm. thick. It has a mass of 2.7g. It is in very good condition and

distinguishing features can be seen on both the obverse and the reveres of the

coin. It is a Chinese coin with a square hole, of the kind referred to in the

archaeological literature as the wen (Costello et al. 2008). On the obverse, the

Chinese text reads “Tong Bao” (this is read right to left along the horizontal

plane) - which is the standard phrasing for “money” or “official currency.” On

the vertical plain, from top to bottom, the coin reads “Kang Xi.” This tells us

that this particular coin was forged during the reign of Kangxi Di, the Kangxi

emperor who ruled China between the “1661-1722”. The writing on the

reverse is in the Manchu script, the traditional language of the Manchurian

people who in 1644 overthrew the Ming emperors and established the Qing

imperial dynasty. This script is present on most Qing era wen and it tells the

reader the mint at which the coin was manufactured. According to the text on

the coin, this coin was manufactured at the imperial mint in Beijing. The

Kangxi emperor was born in 1654 and ruled over China from 1661 to 1722.

He was the longest reigning emperor in modern Chinese history and the period

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 of his rule reign was marked by a time of great stability and wealth for the

country. Because of their larger size and their association with a prosperous

time in China’s history, coins from this reign are viewed as particularly

auspicious and were favored coins for use in medicine, spiritual practices, and

other purposes (Akin 1992) [Figure 6.10 for detail of coin see Figure 6.11].

10. ID: 1956 N 1054 E 981. Stratum 13. This coin was recovered from a context

rich in Chinese artifacts representing a depositional period associated with the

Point Alones Village. It is a round cuprous coin. There is no hole in the center.

It measures 21.2mm in diameter and is 1.7mm thick. It has a mass of 4.41g.

This coin is very heavily corroded and no design or distinguishing features can

be identified on the obverse or the reverse. Because of its diameter and

composition, it is possibly a U.S. nickel minted after 1882, but no definitive

positive identification can be made.

Although few in number, these coins from the Point Alones Village illustrate

the transnational character of the Chinese community in Pacific Grove and they point

towards the multiple local, national, and international circuits of trade and exchange

that occupied many village residents. But these coins likely did much more than

simply reflect the commercial interactions of village residents. The presence of these

coins and their active use (and eventual deposition) attest to ideological and political

contestations occurring around the Point Alones Village. They point towards

traditional and novel practices and identities being worked over. They indicate a

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complex social world within the village, and in the relations between villagers and

their neighbors in Pacific Grove and their connections across the Pacific. In the

following section I will discuss these coins in their social context, exploring how they

might have served as active components of social and political life for village

residents.

A SHORT HISTORY OF MONEY: CHINA

To understand the coins found at the Point Alones Village, we must place their

circulation eventual deposition within the wider currents of Chinese and American

monetary policy - both of which were in periods of flux during this time period and

both of which prefigured the ways that these coins were interpreted and used by both

the Chinese American residents of the Point Alones Village and their non-Chinese

neighbors.

The history of Chinese money is a fascinating and complex. The monetary

policies of various Chinese governments changed over time, often dramatically, and

the objects that served as money commodities also varied over time and space. The

ways that the money found at the Point Alones Village interpolated into powerful

discourses were predicated on both the materiality of these coins and their sedimented

history.

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EARLY HISTORY

Although there remains scholarly debate about the form and function of early

Chinese money, the object with widespread scholarly acceptance as the earliest money

commodity in China was the cowrie shell which served the function of money by at

least the Middle Western Zhou period, (956-858 BCE) and perhaps as early as the

Neolithic (Yung-Ti 2003). Cowries were eventually replaced by coins - primarily

silver and bronze - in most of Imperial China through standardizations developed

during the Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE), although cowries remained a money

commodity in peripheral areas of China and neighboring countries, such as Yunnan,

where they were used to facilitate trade with peoples outside of Imperial China (Yang

2004).

Over time, the Chinese government and non-governmental entities in China

issued money and coinage in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, including “knife

coins” cast into the shape of miniature knives. Coins similar in form to the one that we

have come to call the wen were first cast in the early part of the Han Dynasty (206

BCE – 220 CE) (Whitmore 1983: 365). True “Tongbao” coins became the standard

currency in “the 4th year of the reign of Wu De of Emperor Tang Gaozu” (Yu and Yu

2004: 4). Yu and Yu describe this coin as “a standard coin with a diameter of 2.5cm,

weighing about 3.5 grams, minted in imitation of the Han-dynasty’s standard wu zhu

coins” (Yu and Yu 2004: 4). Tang Gaozu founded the Tang dynasty (618-907) and his

introduction of the Tongbao coin marked “the end of a system of coins valued by

weight and marked the beginning of Chinese coins with the character ‘bao,’ meaning

coin. It was the second monetary revolution after Emperor Qin Shi Huang had unified

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Chinese currency. The Kai Yuan Tong Bao persisted for 1,300 years” (Yu and Yu

2004: 4). The Asian coins (and one of the British coins) found at the Point Alones

Village all contain design elements that were formalized in this period.

These coins quickly spread along international trade routes. As Christie

explains:

Some Chinese coinage had, according to Arab sources, already leaked into the
international trading circuit by the ninth century. The merchant Abu Zaid, who
lived in the port of Siraf on the Persian Gulf late in the ninth century, wrote
that following the increasingly xenophobic Tang Chinese government's
massacre of foreign merchants in the port of Guangzhou in 878 A.D., there still
remained Chinese coins in circulation in Siraf, although supplies were no
longer renewed (Christie 1996: 268).

The international circulation of Chinese tong bao (wen) and their standardization

served as examples for foreign governments. In particular, countries in East and

Southeast Asia tended to use copper coins “as the basis for their own monetary

systems” (Witmore 1983: 363) even when coins with alternative forms were available.

For example in North Sumatra, different currencies, including Islamic gold coins,

were locally minted, By the 14th Century these other monies were replaced by

Chinese and Chinese-looking coins (Christie 1996).

Despite the widespread reach of the bronze Chinese wen, bronze was not the

“official” money commodity in China. For much of Chinese history, silver was the

money commodity. Small bronze coins, stamped or forged, often by Imperial

government mints, were used for daily transactions but larger exchanges were

conducted directly with case silver. As Kann reports “wholesale transactions were

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financed by way of the sycee tael, i.e. by silver ingots, called ‘shoes.’ These were

privately cast…” (Kann 1954: 315).

PAPER MONEY IN CHINA

Alongside the quasi bi-metallic system of silver bullion and bronze coinage

many Chinese governments issued paper currency. This element of imperial monetary

policy had massive impacts on the domestic and international situation in China.

Although paper money had been in use in China for quite some time, economic

historians write that it reached its “greatest development…during the period between

A.D. 1000 and 1500” (Tullock 1957: 395), and especially during the Yuan Dynasty

(1271-1368). During this time period, 12th century European travelers to China were

amazed by the degree and sophistication of Yuan paper currency. For example, Marco

Polo wrote that “In this city of Kanbalu [Cambulac-Peking] is the mint of the Great

Kahn who may truly be said to possess the secret of the alchemists, as he has the art of

producing money by the following process” (Tullock 1957: 393). Marco Polo also

discussed how the Kahn (Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty) was able to

keep paper circulating as a money commodity though severe anti-counterfeiting

techniques and by using force and law to enforce its status as legal tender.

The reality of paper money circulation during the Yuan dynasty was less clean

than the picture painted by Polo. Inflation was a constant problem and the purchasing

power of the Yuan paper money decreased even during the short window of Marco

Polo’s visit. The Yuan government tried various methods to shore-up the value of their

money. For example, in “1294 an imperial decree was issued prohibiting the

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circulation of ‘wooden or bamboo money’ in an effort to preserve the monopoly of

paper money as legal tender” (Tullock 1957: 403). The Yuan dynasty’s extensive

reliance on paper money lead to an international scarcity of wen. As Wisseman

reports: “The Yuan (Mongol) dynasty held very small cop- per reserves, and the

copper coins minted during the Mongol period (1279-1368 A.D.) in China are so few

in number as to constitute numismatic curiosities” (Wisseman 1996: 270).

The problem of inflation was a regular, recurring issue with the paper currency

in China and was not limited to the Yuan dynasty. Indeed, some scholars have argued

that the rampant inflation of the value of paper money was one of the primary reasons

for the fall of the Song Dynasty (Chown 1994: 257). The government established

various measures in an attempt to fight this inflation. For example: “In 1192 the

Emperor decreed that the amount of paper in circulation was not to exceed that of

copper cash” (Chown 1994: 399). These periods of rampant inflation were balanced

by long periods where there was very little inflation, including the late Chin when

“rates of inflation which would do credit to a modern European country were

obtained” (Chown 1994: 406).

The Ming government (1368 to 1644), which succeeded the Yuan, produced

copper wen in greater quantity and at the beginning of the dynasty there was a brief

period when the Ming government did not produce any paper currency, Flynn and

Giraldez note that “in 1375 the Ming government began to issue paper money as a

medium of exchange” (Flynn and Giraldez 1997: 282). The Ming quickly ran into

problems of inflation similar to those that had challenged previous Chinese

governments. As Flynn and Giraldez report: “As the quantity of notes rapidly

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increased, confidence in their purchasing power quickly declined. By the fifteenth

century, the people had rejected paper in favor of silver which they regarded as a more

reliable unit of account and medium of exchange” (Flynn and Giraldez 1997: 282).

Paper was not the only non-metallic object used by the Chinese as a money

commodity. In other times and places bamboo sticks were used as a money

commodity (Lin 2006: 36-37). Despite China’s long history with non-metallic and

paper currency, the Qing government did not issue “official” money in paper form.

There are a variety of possible reasons for this ranging from the Qing government’s

sophisticated reliance on their bimetallic system to what Chen has identified as their

recognition of “the high correlation between the downfall of the previous dynasties

and the accompanying hyperinflation” (Chen 1975: 361).

MONEY IN CHINA DURING THE QING ERA

Like numerous previous dynasties, the Qing government and private merchants

both relied very heavily on silver for large and wholesale transactions. This demand

for silver created an economic engine with global implications. Flynn and Giraldez

write that “conservative official estimates indicate that Latin American alone

produced about 150,000 tons of silver between 1500 and 1800, (perhaps exceeding

80% of the entire world’s production over that time span). And virtually all of this

silver engaged in intercontinental trade” (Flynn and Giraldez 1995: 429). The

voracious Chinese appetite for silver was a key factor funding and driving European

colonialism is the Americas. The amount of silver imported into China via Manila and

Canton was massive: Up to 2 million Spanish dollars a year (Burger 1976). European

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colonial powers were not the only, or even necessarily the primary, source of raw

silver used by the Chinese. Between the 16th and 18th centuries there was a “large

outflow of silver from Japan to China” (Yamamura and Tetsuo 1983: 357) in an

amount that some scholars have argued might be as much as “six or seven times that

shipped from the New World” (Yamamura and Tetsuo 1983: 357).

But the global supply of silver was neither constant nor did it neatly conform

to Chinese demands. The problem of fluxuating rates between the silver used in large

governmental and wholesale transactions and the bronze (wen coins) used in most

everyday interactions was highlighted by the Qianlong Emperor (1735-1796) when he

said “we think that uniformity of the price of copper cash (in terms of the silver tael)

cannot be expected to exist among the different counties. And even in a small town,

the price of copper cash differs in the morning and in the evening” (cited in Chen

1975: 380). Although the government tried to control the supply of copper/bronze

coins, it was an uphill battle, as Chen explains:

The situation of the copper currency system was not much different. Although
copper cash was coined by the government mints, through the period in
question, a considerable amount of counterfeit coins and lighter foreign coins
circulated side by side with the standard copper cash. Copper cash in sums
were counted by tiao, or strings containing 100 copper cash, and by chuan, or
strings containing 1,000 copper cash. The fineness of copper coins in those
strings in actual circulation differed from locality to locality and trade to trade.
As a result, almost every locality had its own ‘market cash.’ It often happened
that the market cash of a certain locality would have different exchange values
for the standard copper cash at different localities, depending on the relative
abundance of the market cash in these localities. (Chen 1975: 363).

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 In the early part of the 19th century, there was a glut of silver in the Chinese

market. To combat arbitrage, and to keep the price of copper wen in check, Chinese

officials declared the exportation of copper coins illegal (Chen 1975). By the middle

of the 19th century, Britain and other Western powers were importing vast quantities

of opium into China, which was largely paid for in silver. While the causes and

consequences of the Opium Wars were many, one of the key Chinese concerns that

lead to them banning the importation of opium was the disruption to the relative price

of Bronze (wen coins) and silver that occurred when silver stocks were exhausted from

opium-related transactions. As Chen explains: “The problem of "expensive silver and

cheap copper cash" became so alarming that at the end of 1838, the central

government finally decided to suppress the opium trade. This eventually led to the

Sino- British Opium War, the event that resulted in China's subjugation by Western

powers for a century” (Chen 1975: 367).

The money situation in Southern China during the time period in which the

Point Alones Village was occupied, then, involved a system that operated in a

functionally bimetallic fashion where copper wen coins served as the money

commodity for most day-to-day transactions while silver ingots served as the money

commodity for larger transitions. There were a variety of wen coins in active

circulation, including counterfeit coins, and for a brief period of time large numbers of

zinc Vietnamese dong coins. To add to this complexity were the coins minted in Hong

Kong by the British government and the many private banknotes and other tokens of

credit that Chinese and Western banks issued in Hong Kong and Guangdong.

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HONG KONG MINT AND BANK NOTES

The mint at Hong Kong was established when the Legislative Council of the

Colony of Hong Kong issued decree No. 2 of 1864 : “An Ordinance for establishing a

Mint in the Colony of Hong Kong.” This ordinance was propagated in order to allow

“coin silver coin of such weight and fitness and of such designs as may from time to

time be approved by her Majesty, from dies to be furnished by the Master of the Royal

Mint under such regulations as may be prescribed by the Lords Commissioners of Her

Majesty’s Treasury.” The form of the mil coins authorized in this act is particularly

interesting because one of these coins was found at the Point Alones Village. These

coins were established by the Legislative Council of the Colony of Hong Kong in

Ordinance No. 1 of 1864, a law that proposed that silver coins were good for payments

up to “two dollars” and that copper cent and mil coins were good for payments up to

“one dollar.” The coins that were minted were described in the Ordinance as follows:

1. “The Silver pieces of Money should be prepared of Silver containing twenty

per Cent of Alloy. Every such Piece should have for the obverse Impression

Her Majesty’s Effigy crowned with the Inscription ‘Victoria Queen,’ and for

the reverse Impression an Inscription indicating the Value of the Piece in Cents

of a Dollar with the Words ‘Hongkong’ and the Date of the Year, and the same

Inscription repeated in Chinese Characters.”

2. “A Copper Piece representing One hundredth Part of a Dollar should have for

the obverse Impression Her Majesty’s Effigy crowned with the Inscription

‘Victoria Queen,’ and for the reverse Impression the Inscription “Victoria

Queen,” and for the reverse Impression the Inscription ‘One Cent - Hongkong,’

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 with the Date of the Year, and the same Inscription repeated in Chinese

Characters.”

3. “Another Copper Piece representing One thousandth Part of a Dollar should be

perforated in the Centre and have for the obverse Impression the Inscription

‘V.F.’ surmounted by a Crown with ‘Hongkong - One Mil’ and the Date of the

Year, and for the reverse Impression the Inscription ‘Hongkong’ -‘ One Cash

or One Mil,’ represented in Chinese Characters.”

One contemporaneous explanation for the form of these coins is provided by the

American Numismatic and Archaeological Society who suggested that the British

struck coins were “apparently a compromise between their own and the Chinese; [the

British colonists] could not quite stand a square hole in the center, so they made a

round one” (Proceedings of the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society,

1887: 8).

By 1887 the colonial government repealed the previously described laws. But

the laws outlasted the mint itself and in the ordinance that repealed the Hong Kong

currency laws, Ordinance No. 4 of 1887, it was noted that: “the Mint has long ceased

to exist.”

FOREIGN COINS IN CHINA

In addition to Vietnamese dong previously described, foreign coins from other

sources regularly served as a money commodity in China. In Southern China during

the 18th and 19th century, foreign coins minted in silver and silver alloys were

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regularly accepted by Chinese merchants for trade and exchange. Especially valuable

were Spanish silver coins, which were valued for their high silver content. Irigoin has

recently argued that various internal and external factors in the late 18th and early 19th

Centuries “resulted in reduced demand for silver pesos within China” and he

challenges “the alleged role of opium imports in reversing the flows of silver bullion

from China in the early nineteenth century, bolstered by a shortage of silver supply

resulting from a decline in Spanish American output” (Irigoin 2009: 209). This theory,

if true, also helps explain the “revival of coin importation into China in the mid

1850s” (Irigoin 2009: 209). The circulation of coins in Southern China at the time of

the Point Alones Village is summarized by King who explains that “the standard cash

circulating [in the mid 1800s] were then a mixture of old and contemporary, worn and

new, heavy and light, legal and counterfeit, Chinese and foreign” (King 1965: 53).

By exploring the history of coins and money in China we come to understand

that the Chinese individuals who emigrated from Guangdong and other areas in

Southern China would likely have been familiar with dealing in multiple kinds of

coins and other forms of money. Even if the individuals had only made their

transactions through strings of bronze wen, or perhaps zinc dong coins, they would

almost certainly be knowledgeable about the value of silver in China, the

convertibility of metallic standards, and the existence (and the often unreliable nature)

of banknotes and paper money.

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THE MATERIALITY OF MONEY IN THE UNITED STATES

When the United States annexed California as a result of the Treaty of

Guadalupe Hidalgo they brought with them a different money system than the one

currently used in the United States. Today the United States has a system that involves

fiat money issued against the “full faith and credit” of the United States government. It

is a system that includes coins and bills issued by the federal government and our

system involves few financial transactions that do not directly reference currency

issued in dollars and cents. In California during the 1860s, when the Point Alones

Village was first settled, the money system was in a process in flux and many

important changes to this system were being considered. Indeed, many of the most

important features of the contemporary money system of the United States were

developed and implemented during the time period when Chinese Americans lived at

the Point Alones Village. Understanding the history of money and coinage in the

United States is essential to understanding how coins and money became interpolated

into a series of powerful discourses that we see deployed at the Point Alones Village.

COINS AND MONEY IN BRITISH COLONIAL AMERICA

Archaeological excavations at British-colonial sites in the Americas have

revealed that coins were rare in these contexts. Hume has explained that “the quantity

of English silver coins found in excavations is extremely small and I have yet to see a

gold coin from a colonial site; indeed, coins of any sort were always in short supply”

(Hume 2001: 154). Hume points out that the few coins that are found on early

American colonial sites tend to be copper coins and, because they “remained in fast

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circulation for considerable periods of time they are often extremely worn when found

in archaeological excavations” (Hume 2001: 156). He also explains that regular

shortages of coinage in Britis-colonial America lead to English and American

merchants issuing their own tokens, tokens that served a dual purpose of both credit

and advertisement. Forgeries were also a major source of coinage during this time:

Hume notes, “It has been estimated that by 1775 approximately 60 per cent of the

copper coins then in circulation were forgeries” (Hume 2001: 163).

One of the primary ways that government officials in the British North

American colonies dealt with the shortage of coinage was by issuing paper money.

This was met with a varying level of success. The paper currency issued by these

governments was typically circulated locally and the monetary policies of the various

states were often wildly divergent. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, keep the

dangers of inflation ay bay by issuing paper money at rates that prevented dramatic

swings in the value of the currency. Other states, Massachusetts and South Carolina

for example, “failed to limit their emissions [of paper currency] enough to maintain

their bills’ convertibility” (Michener and Wright 2005: 684). This resulted in

widespread mistrust and accusations of financial mismanagement were commonly

levied against the colonial government.

The coins and paper money issued by the British-colonial states were not

moneys issued directly against a base metal or directly against in the state. Instead,

they tended to be, in the words of Andrews, “only a method of reckoning values that, a

statement of the amount in shillings at which a Spanish dollar would be accepted in a

given colony” (Andrews 1918: 74). Even after the colonies became the United States

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of America, the Federal government often looked towards the Spanish silver peso as

the “benchmark” currency that the American dollar should seek to emulate. As was

the case in China, in the United States the Spanish peso was considered the most

stable and reliable currency on the world market. For example, Sylla reports on a

“typical early Continental note” that printed on its face: “This Bill entitles the Bearer

to receive EIGHT Spanish milled dollars, or the value thereof in Gold or Silver,

according to the Resolutions of the Congress held at Philadelphia, the 10th of May,

1775” (Sylla 2006: 78).

COINS AND MONEY IN SPANISH, RUSSIAN, AND MEXICAN CALIFORNIA

Coins were rare in Spanish, Russian, and Mexican California. Instead,

economic transactions were carried out through credit or direct trade. For example,

during the Spanish colonial period, the salaries of Spanish solders and padres was

valued in pesos, although the form that these ‘pesos’ took was usually “in kind, not

coin" (Hackel 1997: 114) resulting in the ‘peso’ standing for a unit of account and not

as a medium of exchange or a store of value (see Sargent and Velde 2002 for a

discussion of how these three previously distinct features of money came together in

the 19th century).

This scarcity of cash and coin extended into the Mexican period when trade

was primarily conducted on credit. According to Clay, trade “centered on the

exchange of cattle products for luxury food items such as chocolate, sugar, and tea, as

well as cloth for the Mission Indians and religious items” (Clay 1997: 204). Trade was

almost universally based on credit, although at times, as Schweikart and Dot explain,

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cattle hides “also called ‘California Bank Notes,’ circulated as a popular form of early

money” (Schweikart and Dot 1999: 212). The scarcity of specie money and coinage

did not result in those coins that were present losing value or becoming, as many

Chinese coins seem to have, circulated primarily for their non-monetary qualities.

Instead, a premium was often offered for those who could pay for goods and services

with specie money. This advantage is revealed in accounts such as an 1845 letter from

Santa Barbara merchant John Jones to Thomas Larkin’s clerk complaining about the

price given when the clerk sold a number of bottles of rum: “I presume from the very

low price for which you appear to have sold it [the rum], that it was of course for

cash…” (Clay 1997: 208). The coins that were used in Spanish and then later Mexican

California were not the standardized national currencies of late 19th century

governments, instead, they were a hodgepodge of various coins from different nations

that were traded according to various fluctuating exchange values and the silver

standard.

THE UNITED STATES

The individuals who intentionally crafted the early monetary system of the

United States had experience with money systems throughout the world, including

China. Robert Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Congress’s

Superintendent of Finance, and an instrumental figure in arranging the early financial

system of the United States, including the charter of the first national bank, had made

a good portion of his fortune through the “China trade.” One of his boats was

christened the Empress of China and he predicted that one of his expeditions would

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include “the first [ship] who shall display the American Flag in those distant regions”

(Morris 1784: 66). His experience with international trade and the Chinese monetary

system undoubtedly shaped how the United States crafted its early money system.

The power to mint and print money is explicitly given to the federal

government in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Under the Constitution, the government is empowered to “coin money, regulate the

value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures” and

to “provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the

United States.” But those constitutional affordances did not result in a uniform

currency quickly gaining hegemony in transactions between people, institutions, or

States.

A significant feature that the monetary system of the United States shared with

China is that early incarnations of the United States dollar were benchmarked against

Spanish coins. For example, the 1792 coinage act established the Federal mint in

Philadelphia. This mint struck its first coins a year later. These coins, according to the

act, were to range in value from one “eagle” worth ten dollars to one “half cent.” The

dollar, also called “unit” in the text of the legislation, was defined as “the value of a

Spanish milled dollar.” Because Congress set a gold/silver exchange rate that favored

silver, the United States effectively placed its money system on a silver standard

(Friedman 1990). Although the United States mints were authorized to produce coins;

foreign coins, especially Spanish and Mexican coins, circulated alongside American

coins and were, in many cases, more common than small US silver coins. As Irigoin

explained: “Mexican coins appear to have been the chief metallic money used in

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southern United States, and it was the most popular money in the American West as

late as 1849” (Irigoin 2009: 229). Bank specie reserve holdings also predominantly

took the form of foreign coins. Irigoin again explains:

Since the mid 1820s, all sorts of Spanish American coins had entered the
United States as bank reserves, especially into the Bank of the United States. In
1845, the US Treasury estimated that 75 percent of the specie holdings of the
412 banks in the country were foreign coins. Domestic commerce was always
short of small US silver coins and, as a result, worn Spanish fractions
continued in circulation. Notwithstanding the dubious fineness and weight of
these coins, displacing Mexican coins from circulation took several years and
many failed initiatives by the US Congress and US Mint (Irigoin 2009: 230).

It was not until the coinage act of 1857 that foreign coins were declared to not be legal

tender in the United States.

During the early part of the 19th century, paper currency in the form of bank

notes were issued by various institutions, primarily state charted banks and the

Congress-chartered Second Bank of the United States. Many of the state charted banks

proved to be unreliable and prone to bankruptcy, a situation that Friedman

summarized as “a mixture of U.S. and foreign silver coins plus paper money issued by

state banks, some of doubtful quality” (Freedman 1990: 1162), which “had made the

notes issued by the banks [of the U.S.] a favored medium of exchange” (Friedman

1990: 1162). The money system quickly became politically charged and proposed

“reforms” were at the center of fierce partisan debates in Congress. Issues of currency,

banking, and metallic standards were central in national elections in the years before

California became a part of the United States. The effective silver standard was

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eliminated in 1834 when Andrew Jackson and his political allies passed the Coinage

Act of 1834. After the law was passed, according to Rolnick and Weber, “the status of

gold and silver currency was reversed” because the rate of gold/silver exchange was

“higher than the market price for gold and remained so for the rest of the century”

(Rolnick and Weber 1986: 188). When California became a part of the United States,

circulating money was a complex hodgepodge of gold and silver coins, coins minted

by the U.S. and by foreign country, and banknotes issued by various state chartered

banks (the Second National bank had been eliminated by Andrew Jackson and his

allies). This chaotic, politically charged system extended through the time that the

Point Alones Village was occupied. Blackford has described how:

Prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the nation's banking
system was a mixed one composed of both state and national banks. National
banks were chartered and regulated by the federal government and were
empowered to issue their own bank notes. State governments chartered and
supervised the state banks. While for all practical purposes the state banks
could not issue bank notes, they possessed certain advantages over the national
banks: lower reserve and capital requirements, the ability to make loans on
land, and a generally laxer form of government regulation. With little central
control, America's post-Civil War banking system was inherently unstable, and
economic developments in the 1880s and 1890s exacerbated the instability of
the system. Nowhere was this truer than in California (Blackford 1973: 482).

COINS AND THE MONEY SYSTEM IN 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY

AMERICAN CALIFORNIA

Understanding how the money system operated in 19th and 20th century

California is instrumental in order to understand how the coins uncovered in the

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archaeological excavations at the Point Alones Village articulated with local, national,

and global productions. Money, and the form of the money commodity, was at the

heart of the transfer of California to Mexico. When California was annexed to the

United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, money was at the center of the

treaty. As part of the agreement, the United States government was required to pay the

Mexican government for the “extension acquired by the boundaries of the United

States… the sum of fifteen millions of dollars” which was, notably, to be payable “at

the city of Mexico, in the gold or silver coin of Mexico.” California, then, was

officially “purchased” from Mexico using Mexican coin. While this treaty ostensibly

resulted in California becoming neatly folded into the United States money system,

this incorporation was unevenly applied and took decades to work itself out.

In 1848, gold was discovered in California, ushering in the famous gold rush

and dramatically and quickly changing the social landscape of California. Despite the

changes to the money system that developed in consort with the gold rush, some

aspects of the previous monetary system remained, including a shortage of coins and

the widespread use of credit and the barter system.

The materiality of money was clearly an issue of contention at the founding of

California. When the California constitution was written it directly addressed the topic

in Article IV Sections 34 and 35. Section 34 addressed the question of state chartered

banks: “The Legislature shall have no power to pass any act granting any charter for

banking purposes; but associations may be formed, under general laws, for the

deposite [sic] of gold and silver, but no such association shall make, issue, or put in

circulation, any bill, check, ticket, certificate, promissory note, or other paper, or the

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paper of any bank, to circulate as money.” Section 35 expanded the prohibition against

banking: “The Legislature of this State shall prohibit, by law, any person or persons,

association, company, or corporation, from exercising the privileges of banking, or

creating paper to circulate as money.”

These two sections clearly highlight the political stakes of the materiality of

money. “Associations” (not banks) could be formed to safely store “gold and silver”

but paper currency and bank-issued alternatives to gold and silver were strictly

verboten.

These banking regulations and the scarcity of coin fit awkwardly with federal

regulations that required the payment of customs duties in “recognized coin”

(Chandler 2003: 242). As the population of California grew dramatically and the value

of gold moving out, and the goods moving in, also grew apace, these customs

requirements lead to “hoarding of the few pieces of metallic currency that existed”

(Schweikart and Dot 1989: 212). Even though there was a clear need for more

currency, the “United States did not open a mint in San Francisco until 1854, meaning

that the scarcity of coin persisted amidst an ocean of gold.” (Schweikart and Dot 1989:

212). While gold dust was often used as currency, it was difficult to verify the purity

and weight of “pure gold” limiting its use as money. Private mints quickly sprung up

and, according to Chandler:

By the summer of 1849, San Francisco's private minters, following a precedent

from the North Carolina gold fields, were in full production, eventually
striking gold coins ranging from 25 cents to $50, based on the U.S. Mint
standard of $20.67 per troy ounce of gold. Still, such coins circulated at
uncertain values, which was debilitating for commerce. Bankers accepted or

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 discounted the privately minted coin, which were not illegal until 1864,
according to their metallic value (Chandler 2003: 242)

After the U.S. mint began operations in San Francisco in 1854 the many private mints

quickly lost their luster and “in late 1856, the private minters shut down for good”

(Chandler 2003: 242). It’s notable that the state’s constitutional prohibitions on bank

charters did not completely eliminate organizations that functioned essentially like

banks, and many organizations engaged in banking activities that were, at best,

questionably legal (Schweikart and Dot 1989).

During the Civil War the federal government began issuing “greenbacks” to

pay for the war effort. Although the currency was legal tender for the payment of

government debts and obligations, it was not backed by either silver or gold (Friedman

1990: 1163). These developments, in the words of Chandler “brought a new monetary

problem to California. In December 1861, the government suspended specie

payments. No longer would it redeem paper money in gold. In 1862, it had presses

running off treasury bills, or paper money, to pay war expenses, and in 1863, Congress

established national banks, which also issued currency” (Chandler 2003: 243). This

paper money was treated with great trepidation in California and it regularly traded at

a discount to gold, its value fluctuating with the fortunes of the Union Army. For

example, “currency reached a low value of thirty-nine cents to the gold dollar in the

summer of 1864, as General Ulysses S. Grant stalled before Richmond” (Chandler

2003: 243). Political and judicial organizations in California often defied the federal

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government over the materiality of money. This situation is described by Chandler

who explains how:

Californians demanded coin in almost all daily transactions, and few trusted
the Union government's supplemental Civil War paper currency, known as
"greenbacks" (which, unlike national banknotes, were issued directly by the
government). When the California Supreme Court upheld a law allowing
contracts to specify the type of money acceptable in payment, it essentially
defied the U.S. government's contention that greenbacks were "legal tender."
Most lenders demanded gold in payment, leaving the U.S. customs collectors
as almost the only people in the state willing to accept greenbacks. Congress
realized that as long as gold circulated as freely as it did, the national banking
system could not make any inroads in California. Accordingly, in 1870,
Congress amended the National Bank Act to provide for the creation of
national gold banks, with new notes payable in gold coin. Congress required
that the banks hold a 25-percent reserve in specie substantially higher than
most antebellum private banks would have held and limited the total amount of
outstanding gold notes to $45 million. Ten gold banks were organized in
California, and when all national banknotes became redeemable in specie in
1879, all ten switched to standard national charters (Chandler 2003: 228).

Debates about paper money were not the only debates that surrounded the

materiality of money in California during the time that the Point Alones Village was in

existence. The period between 1873 and 1900 saw fierce debates about the switch to

the gold standard. Often debates about the materiality of money became fierce national

debates that articulated with other political logics, such as the relative power of rural

and urban interests and what “kind” of person (race, class, occupation) constituted the

“ideal” national subject. Cooper explains how “the year 1896 saw the only U.S.

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presidential campaign devoted to the issue of the monetary standard, following

William Jennings Bryan’s nomination on the basis of his famous “cross of gold”

speech [...] the point is that the issue was a source of continual turmoil and

uncertainty, not serene stability” (Cooper 1982: 6) (I should note that although

McKinley narrowly carried California in the 1896, winning 49% of the votes cast to

Bryan’s 48%, Bryan was victorious in Monterey county, winning 52% of the vote to

McKinley’s 45%).

Another developments in the materiality of money in California that occurred

during the time that the Point Alones Village was in existence was the 1873

introduction at the behest of Congress of a of a special “‘trade dollar’ specifically for

export to China and the East Indies” (Pletcher 1958: 38). The introduction of this coin

makes clear that trade with China was of national importance for the United States and

that the desires of the Chinese influenced the materiality of United States coins.

In summary, the Point Alones Village existed at a time and place where the

materiality of money was in flux. At different times during its existence the “ideal”

money in California was made from silver, gold, or paper. This ideal was at different

times foreign, local, or national. Throughout this history, the materiality of money was

tied into politically charged discourses and deeply enmeshed with the territorialization

of California.

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COINS AT THE POINT ALONES VILLAGE

In the preceding sections of this chapter I have discussed the fascination that

coins seem to engender in archaeologists and the public. I have explained how

overseas Chinese archaeologists have used Chinese coins to date archaeological sites

and, increasingly, to infer social and spiritual behavior occurring in overseas Chinese

communities. I described the various coins found during my excavations of the Point

Alones Village. Finally, I placed those coins into a historical context by discussing the

role of coins in the money economies of both China and the United States leading up

to and during the 19th century. When the coins found at the Point Alones Village are

placed into their historical, social, and spatial contexts it becomes clear that they were

brought together and formed a heterogeneous assemblage through a myriad of

different social, technological, and archaeological processes, each step of which was

pregnant with social meaning.

From the moment when these coins were stamped (or cast), through their

circulation within a money economy and a parallel (and often overlapping) economy

of affect and imagination, to their deposition and eventual recirculation in the minds of

archaeologists, descendants, and the media, these coins have done far more than

simply stand for empty markers of abstract value. In this section of the chapter I will

trace some of the pathways that these coins may have followed, explaining how their

unique physical and sensual qualities afforded their circulation in imaginary spaces

removed from simple, naked economic exchange. In this section I discuss the

“imaginary” worlds that the Chinese coins recovered from archaeological excavations

may have circulated in for the Chinese residents of the Point Alones Village and for

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their non-Chinese neighbors. Drawing from the coins recovered during archaeological

excavation, I address the following topics:

1. I ask how coins recovered from the archaeological excavations at the Point

Alones Village trouble the traditional archaeological distinction between

“Asian” and “non-Asian” coins.

2. I discuss the possibility that the Chinese wen pieces that I recovered during

excavation were used for gambling. Specifically, I ask that if Chinese coins

were primarily used as gambling pieces, what made the coins such a powerful

medium for this particular activity?

3. I discuss the “imaginary” worlds in which the coins found at the Point Alones

Village may have circulated for some of the non-Chinese observers of the

village: Pacific Grove and Monterey residents, local media sources, artists, and

politicians. In particular, I focus on a powerful story of recognition and mis-

recognition of money among the Chinese in Monterey. As I explained in the

previous section, the form of the money commodity and the ability of coins to

stand for a national currency was a deeply contested political topic in

California during the 19th century and the expansion of paper money and

uniform coinage over California was a key component in the “domestication”

and “territorialization” of California. In this section I further explore this

question and address its implications for historical and archaeological analysis.

Ultimately, this chapter argues that coins are fascinating to archaeologists and

historical actors alike because they represent the points where the reliance of discourse

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on objects of material culture and the reliance of objects on sedimented discourse

becomes dangerously transparent. In the object of “the coin,” the objective qualities of

affect, value, and desire are revealed to be fundamentally social. Conversely, in these

coins the social nature of these qualities are reveled to be fundamentally material; of

an object. In coins that social fantasies become especially transparent and, as a result,

especially powerful. Echoing Simmel, I argue that “the distinction between subject

and object is not as radical as the accepted separation of these categories in practical

life and in the scientific world would have us believe” (Simmel 2004: 60) and that

coins are powerful because they so easily reveal this fact. Because of this quality,

coins continue to hold power over affect and desire even when they no longer serve as

empty markers for abstract value and they serve as particularly pregnant nodal points

in political discourse.

THE CONTEXT OF COINS FOUND AT CA-MNT-104

The coins found at the Point Alones Village were a mixture of bronze, silver,

and zinc coins that were forged and stamped in places like Beijing, Hong Kong, and

the United States. Although these coins were found in contexts spread throughout the

site, the contexts all seem to represent casual dumping grounds where trash and rubble

were deposited communally and none of the dumping grounds can be definitively

associated with a particular individual or a specific activity. This is a common

depositional pattern found by archaeologists studying overseas Chinese communities.

Traditionally, historical archaeologists have framed the inability to associate

artifacts with specific individuals or households as an impediment to making

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interpretative claims about the past (Voss 2008c). Recently, archaeologists studying

overseas Chinese communities have pointed out how the emphasis on the “household”

as a unit of study, and the assumption that the “household” represents a stable,

heterosexual, nuclear family, has obscured other levels of community organization and

normalized a specific historically-contingent social relationship across space and time

(Voss 2008c). Although the coins recovered from the Point Alones Village come from

contexts that are not associated with a historically identifiable “individual” or a

“household,” they clearly represent the kinds and types of artifacts that were

circulating through the community and the kinds of objects that had meaning and

value to members of the community. While the geospatial location of the final

deposition of the artifact is an important piece of contextual information for the

process of analysis, it was the movement and circulation of these coins and the

discourses that were woven through and around these coins that generated their

monetary and ideological value. This process of circulation can be traced through

historical and archaeological analysis and we can begin to understand the processes

that brought these coins together from such disparate locations and that allowed them

to be used (and lost and then rediscovered) in this small “out of the way” village in

19th century Pacific Grove.

COINS MINTED IN HONG KONG: THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ASIAN AND

“NON-ASIAN” COINS AT CA-MNT-104

When cataloging coins the primary typological distinction that archaeologists

studying overseas Chinese sites make is the distinction between coins of “Asian” and

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“Non-Asian” origin. Under this classificatory scheme the artifacts recovered from the

excavations at CA-MNT-104 number as follows:

5. Asian coins: 4

6. Non-Asian coins: 4

7. Unknown coins: 2

Although the sample size is small, there are no clear patterns to this data. Both

“Asian” coins and “non-Asian” (U.S.) coins were recovered from the same contexts.

This suggests that these coins were used in heterogeneous contexts. The coins were

not recovered from a “horde” - either a place where individual squirreled away their

savings or a place where “tokens” for a gambling den were kept. This also suggests

that they were discarded through a similar process: They were casually lost. Were it

not for the material characteristics of the coins, I would not be able to differentiate

between the three categories.

Although this classification is analytically useful in narrow contexts, my

experience tracing in the object biographies of these coins has convinced me that the

common archaeological division between Asian and non-Asian coins is not a stark as

is implied by this category, either in object form or function.

One difficulty with this classification is how it obscures important differences

between the coins within each category. For example, classifications of coins as

“Asian” would analytically fold together coins minted in China with coins minted in

Hong Kong. The Hong Kong coins were minted and ostensibly circulated primarily in

Asia, but their presence at the Point Alones Village in Pacific Grove suggests that they

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had far greater reach than just the British controlled areas of China, and that they

circulated for reasons other than that which was intended in the decree that called for

the minting of “Copper Piece representing One thousandth Part of a Dollar.” These

coins were minted in territory that was controlled by the British Imperial government

for purposes that primarily benefited white colonists and that were approved by the

imperial British government in London. Their form was based upon the traditional

“Chinese” coins of the wen and of the Imperial Chinese government, but they included

clear elements of British style and connoted components of British authority - most

notably a crown and inscription representing Queen Victoria - the sovereign head of

the British Empire. Interestingly, these coins were minted alongside other, higher

denomination, coins that did not mimic the “Chinese style.” The degree to which the

coins minted by the British authorities at Hong Kong mimicked the “traditional style”

of the wen coin was directly correlated to the value of the coin relative to the “Hong

Kong dollar” which approached the look of a British silver coin (though it did include

the Chinese characters “Xianggong,” Hong Kong, on the obverse).

Another difficulty with classifying this coin as either “Asian” or as “Non-

Asian” lies in their circulation. Coins in this style were minted with the explicit

purpose of circulating as a money commodity in Hong Kong in order to provide a

stable economic substrate that was under the control and authority of the British

imperial government - thus it served dual functions, as both a economic lubricant,

increasing the “efficiency” of economic transactions, and as a marker of sovereignty,

reminding the residents of Hong Kong in their everyday transactions that “Victoria

Royal” was the figure who guaranteed the objective nature of money. This imbued the

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British sovereign and, by extension, the British colonial apparatus with the quasi-

mystical power that accompanies the fetish transformation of metal into money.

As this coin circulated, it moved in and out of various social and economic

contexts. Although we will never be able to reconstruct the entire trajectory of the

particular coin found at the Point Alones Village, we do know for certainty that it

circulated between and within different social and cultural worlds, being neither

wholly of any but transforming, even if in a small way, all that came into contact with

it. We know that when this coin was minted it was designed to be used for everyday

transactions in Hong Kong. If it kept to this purpose in its early days it might have

been used by a Chinese individual to purchase some dumplings for breakfast or to buy

a handful of nails to repair a fishing boat. It may have been used by an American

tourist to purchase a portrait from a Chinese street artist or it might have been strung

together with hundreds of other coins like itself on a long rope through its round hole

(not square, like the wen coins produced by the Chinese imperial government or the

dong coins produced by the Vietnamese [and later French] government]) and traded

for a coin with a greater denomination or used for a larger purchase of goods or

services.

Alternatively, this coin may have not kept to the purpose intended by British

colonial authorities in its early days. Coins have a way of quickly becoming more

meaningful, powerful, and useful than the issuing authorities might have intended. The

low monetary value of the coin may have belied a strong spiritual value. Perhaps this

coin, after it left the British mint, was thrown to a Taoist icon at a temple in order to

bring good fortune. Or perhaps the coin was offered in a funeral procession - in order

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to give the deceased individual money for his upcoming journey to the other side. It

may have been collected by a British missionary to act as a keepsake of her voyage to

China, or it may have been given to an American child so that he could perform a

“Chinese magic trick.”

Whatever the case, the coin found its way onto a boat that crossed 6,000 miles

of the Pacific Ocean and eventually was brought to the Point Alones Village where it

was most certainly not circulated for the purposes that the British minting authorities

intended. It may have been brought directly - as a keepsake reminding an immigrant of

his time in Hong Kong. It may have been brought to San Francisco where it was

traded to a Point Alones resident who ran gambling operation to be used as a token

representing a gaming piece; a symbolic token of “real money.” Or it may have been

used in funeral processions or for religious purposes in Monterey. It may even have

been intended to be sold to one of the many non-Chinese tourists who could not read

Chinese and would never distinguish this coin from a coin minted by the Chinese

imperial government, who visited the Point Alones Village or who stopped by the

roadside stands where village residents sold abalone shells and other curios to passing

tourists.

The point of this speculation isn’t to trace a definitive route that this coin took

but, instead, to emphasize the multiple possible trajectories and the imaginary

processes though which this particular coin may have passed. It is apparent from both

the form and the genealogy of this coin that it was not strictly “Chinese” nor strictly

“British” nor strictly “American.” It may have been all of these simultaneously or it

may have passed through these various stages in parts or in whole. What is undeniable

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about the essence of the coin is that the various global forces that were involved in its

manufacture and transportation around the world also adhered to the object itself - in

both its material form and its context of use and deposition

Although the story of the Hong Kong 1 mil piece may be the one that most

clearly dismantles the East/West division through which artifacts at overseas Chinese

sites have been viewed, all of the coins followed similarly complex trajectories from

production through consumption and deposition to their eventual recovery and

recirculation by archaeologists in the present. Although the story of the circulation of

the recovered coins at the Point Alones Village only captures part of the biography of

these objects, it is an important part. The Liberty Dimes had clear value as currency

during the late 19th and early 20th centuries but the other coins likely did not. If one

accepts the current archaeological consensus that Chinese wen pieces and other forms

of copper “cash” did not circulate as currency or, more accurately, as the “money

commodity” in North America, then the presence of coins of this type at the Point

Alones Village indicates that these objects had purposes other than money and that

they fit into the social imaginary of the Point Alones Village in ways that were not

strictly confined to the “abstract value” that contemporary money purports to (but

certainly does not actually) conform to. There are several categories of “non-

monetary” uses for coins that have been suggested by historical archaeologists

including tokens in gambling, as ritual artifacts used for “luck,” for “spiritual

purposes,” or as “medicine.”

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THE CHINESE WEN COINS RECOVERED FROM CA-MNT-104: SUITABLE

FOR GAMBLING?

The case for the use of copper wen pieces as gambling artifacts is quite strong.

The historical record regularly describes how these artifacts were employed in various

games. The use of these coins as gambling tokens was not just a function of their loss

of value as currency. Take, for example, this description of a Chinese gaming house in

China from the 1873 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

The subject of the illustration is the interior of a licensed gambling-house in

the Portuguese settlement of Macao, held in high favor with the native
Chinese, and the occasional resort of Europeans and Americans. The game
may be simply termed odd-and-even, and is conducted on the following plan:
A disk on the table is divided into four parts, marked one, two, three, and four,
and the player is at liberty to stake his venture on any of the above numbers.
Behind the table stands the banker, who is remarkable for the expertness and
precision with which he keeps the various accounts of the players, who, as a
rule, open an account with the bank on entering. This account is kept in black
characters upon a pewter slab in front of the player, and finally made up when
the player's purse is cleaned out, or the play is over, the bank charging seven
per cent. interest on every transaction. When the stakes have been arranged, the
man on the right takes up a handful of polished copper cash, which are placed
in a heap at some distance from him. He then, with a long slender wand, picks
out the cash upon the table in fours, the remaining one, two, three, or four
deciding the game. This is the part of the game which is most closely
scrutinized by the players, more especially when the pile of cash is nearly told
out, each player watching with a painful eagerness as the last pieces are
carefully separated, and he reads his fate in the odd or even as the wand is
lifted from the last cash (Harpers Weekly 1873 June 14: 517).

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In the United States the use of Chinese copper wen as gambling tokens is quite clear

from historical evidence and descriptions of the use of these coins are repeated again

and again in newspaper accounts of Chinese communities. For example, in the May,

25 1890 issue of the Los Angeles Times a reporter records a game of Fan Tan,

explaining that:

[In addition to various other amusements there are] four fan-tan games in full
blast in the Chinese quarter. A number of Chinese coins are placed on the
table; the dealer takes a cone something like those used in legerdemain
performances and places it over a pile of the coin. Those remaining outside are
swept off the table. The players bet on whether the number of coins under the
cone is an odd number or even. When all bets are down, he lifts the coins, one
by one, from the pile, and, as the pile decreases, the excitement and anxiety of
the of the players proportionately increases.

The extensive use of Chinese coins as gambling tokens is, as discussed earlier in this

chapter, also attested for archaeologically by the large caches of Chinese coins that are

occasionally found in archaeological excavations of overseas Chinese sties and of the

prevalence of Chinese coins from contexts related to gambling.

Descriptions of items confiscated from Chinese gambling houses by police

investigators regularly highlighted the coins that were recovered. The presence of

Chinese coins was imagined to be so indicative of gambling that their co-occurrence

with non-Chinese money was taken to be prima facie evidence of an illegal gambling

operation. For example, in 1895 the Chicago Tribune described the scene of a

gambling raid where “silver dollars and Chinese money were heaped up on a big table

at No. 319 Clark street yesterday afternoon when Detectives Alex and Repetto, of the

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Harrison Street Station, made their way through a cloud of mixed opium and tobacco

smoke and arrested ten Chinamen on a charge of gambling. The Celestials were deep

in an exciting game of fan-tan when the policemen suddenly appeared before them.”

In 1889 the Los Angeles Times described a similar raid, explaining how, when a police

officer arrived at a suspected gambling site:

The safe was then emptied of its contents, and the alleged cup and rake
diligently searched for, but they could not be found, not even a fragment of
china. The safe contained $135.65 in coin, some white buttons, a fan-tan rake
and $139.65 in cash scattered over the table, as the officers claimed, in
addition to the dominoes, black beads and Chinese coin found on the table
when Policeman Ritch and Sargent Smith entered the room, the Chinese were
wonderfully expert in getting all of the white buttons and money into the safe
without getting any of the white buttons and black beads mixed and causing
the china cup and fan-tan rake to disappear into thin air before the years of the
officers who were watching them and swore that they saw the cup and rake go
into the safe.

That the coins at the Point Alones Village were not found in contexts that can

be definitively linked to a gambling house and no single individual there was known

to be a professional gambler does not remove the possibility that these coins were used

in gaming. There is ample historical evidence that suggests that gambling was not

something that was limited to large institutional gaming halls. Casual gaming was also

a pastime for Chinese Americans among friends and family. Small groups of children

and adults would regularly play these games for small stakes or as an amusement to

pass the time (Culin 1889, 1891, 1895). It is almost certain that these sorts of causal

games were taking place at the Point Alones Village. Local Pacific Grove newspapers

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wrote of raids on gambling dens in the Chinese quarters (although it is difficult to tell

if some of these raids were on the Point Alones Village or on the smaller Chinese

community down in “Old Monterey”). Indeed, headlines like: “Police Raid Chinatown

[...] Same Places Arrested Three Weeks Ago Are Again Wide Open” were common in

Monterey long after the Point Alones Village had been destroyed (Monterey Daily

Cypress and American, July 29, 1921). Oral historical evidence also suggests that

gambling, or more properly, gaming, occurred at the Point Alones Village. For

example, while giving a tour of the archaeological site to several elderly Chinese

individuals, I began discussing several small black and white gaming pieces found at

the archaeological site. Some of the individuals on the tour had parents and

grandparents who were born at the Point Alones Village. While these individuals were

born after the village was destroyed, they did speak about using similar gaming pieces

as children.

But why do coins make for particularly handy gaming tokens? Tokens so

useful that they would be shipped across the Pacific Ocean for this purpose and that

they would spread around the world to wherever overseas Chinese individuals

traveled? Their materiality is obviously an important contributing factor. The physical

qualities that made these objects appropriate money commodities also made them

appropriate gaming tokens: They were plentiful, durable, inexpensive, easy to

transport when strung together, and they readily fit in the hand for wagers.

Furthermore, they each have a clear obverse and reverse, allowing for a heads/tails

wager. But these qualities alone cannot explain their widespread use. One can think of

dozens of artifacts that would serve as their functional equivalent: Beads, buttons,

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shells, dominoes, dice, etc… Some archaeologists have proposed that their spread was

related to a mistaken assumption on the part of Chinese emigrants that their money

would hold its value in overseas communities, but then why would the coins be used

as gaming pieces in China, Japan, and Korea as has been repeatedly attested by

historic travelers such as the example given above (see Culin 1895 for a description of

various games that use “cash” coins as central tokens)?

While the form of the coins is undoubtedly a key component of their appeal, I

argue that something more complex and interesting is taking place when individuals

substitute “cash” for cash and use coins as tokens in games of skill and chance.

Simmel argues that the value of money “develops with the increase in distance

between the consumer and the cause of his enjoyment” (Simmel 2004: 66). That is to

say, money and the objects that congeal money (coins, bank notes, etc...) become

valuable because they push realizable desire into a distant spatial and temporal frame.

If this is true then money is made exceptionally valuable though gambling. In places

where the coins still have value as an abstract money commodity, the connection of

the “real” money economy to the “imaginary” money economy of the game is obvious

- the stakes of wagers are money. The fantasy economy of the game is the same as the

real economy outside of the game. But this link between the fantasy and the real

economies still exists even when the coins cannot circulate as a money commodity.

This is because these Chinese coins, even though they may not have value as an active

money commodity in circulation and exchange, retain their essential ties to an

arrangement of values “somewhere else.” Sometimes that “somewhere else” is the

country where these individuals came from. In this instance, by playing fan-tan with

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Chinese coins, individuals are recreating and re-inscribing the value of that past. In

gambling, “fake” money becomes “real” through the process of play and, as a result,

the discursive associations that the money presents - to the Chinese government, to the

country that many of these individuals left behind, to memories that they may have of

their childhoods, become literally valuable. Even though this value seems limited to

the game-world, the translatability of fake value to the wages of the game, a real

value, gives these discursive values a concrete reality. For other players or observers

the “somewhere else” expressed by the value of the coins.

If this process was occurring at the Point Alones Village, and all the available

evidence suggests that it was, then it would be a misnomer to write-off these coins as

‘mere’ gambling tokens or as money without value. They continued to hold a powerful

value through their circulation in a fantasy gaming economy and with this circulation

rewrote and reinforced the links between China and Monterey, between the past and

the present: Links that were engendered and sustained by desire. The coins circulated

as a money commodity at Pacific Grove, but the were a money commodity in an

entirely different sort of economy.

COINS AND PAPER MONEY: PLACING “THE POLITICAL” IN THE

MATERIALITY OF MONEY AT THE POINT ALONES VILLAGE.

I would like to end this chapter with a story from the history of Monterey that

illustrates how the divergent genealogies in the history of Chinese and U.S. money

were articulated with politically powerful local and national discourses. This story

highlights how politically charged the issue of “money” was during the 19th century

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and explores how deeply this “money” issue was interpolated with the project of

domesticating and territorializing California.

“Harrison for Free Silver, so Senator Stewart, of Nevada, Claimed in the

Chinese Debate” read the headline of an 1888 article in the New York Herald. These

two issues were at the forefront of the 1888 presidential election and they were issues

that continued to haunt Benjamin Harrison, the eventual victor, after his election. It

was well known that Harrison, as a senator, had opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act

and his position on the issue of “free silver” was, in the eyes of free silver supporters,

ambiguous at best. News from the Republican nominating convention noted the

political maneuvering around these two issues instigated by delegates from California

and Nevada who pushed Harrison to forcefully articulate anti-Chinese positions. For

example, the New York Herald reported that “De Young, the editor of the San

Francisco Chronicle, called on General Harrison before returning to the Pacific slope,

and had a long talk on the Chinese and the silver question.” The newspaper then notes

that if “Harrison has changed his position which was rather equivocal before, it is no

more than he has done in reference to the exclusion of the Chinese. The plan to carry

the Pacific slope for Harrison required that he make pledges on these two subjects.” In

1888, the Missouri Republican reporting “from the Chicago Convention” highlighted

the two issues by reporting that a senior Republican official was: “Trying to Excuse

Harrison’s Love for the Chinaman - Dissatisfied with the Silver Plank in the

Platform.”

Harrison’s political enemies hammered him on these issues. The Democratic

National Committee’s campaign “text book” for the 1888 election devoted two

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chapters to the topic of Chinese immigration, detailing how they party planned to

highlight his prior support for Chinese immigration. Cleveland’s support for the gold

standard blunted some of the criticism he took on the silver issue, but attacks on that

issue picked up during the rematch election of 1892 when the Democratic party

nominated Adlai Stevenson, a known supporter of “free silver” to the vice presidential

ticket. Even many of Harrison’s political supporters on the West Coast were lukewarm

about his stance on these two issues. San Francisco Chronicle, a Republican

newspaper, reported “On the Pacific Coast: Chinese Harrison Received with Coolness

by the Republicans and is Denounced by the Democrats.” The paper continued, noting

that: “General Harrison has been elected as the Republican candidate, not by the State

of California.” The Democratic leaning Daily Alta California was more pointed,

arguing that “there is present, portentious and actual danger in supporting Harrison in

this State. The Republicans of this State have before them an opportunity to show that

their anti-Chinese zeal has not been a pretense [...] Upon the issue of silver coinage

Harrison stands against every principle and profession of his party in these silver

States.” In the same year the San Francisco Examiner wrote: “California has never

had an opportunity to show unmistakably her opinion of a pro Chinese candidate. This

year we shall have a square chance at one of the men whom California Republicans, in

1882, swore never to forget.” The San Francisco Bulletin, writing on the same topic,

editorialized that “Mr. Harrison snivels about silver, and, like ‘many eastern men,’ is

misinformed on the Chinese question.”

Editorial cartoons ridiculed Harrison for his support of the Chinese, and

newspaper articles proporting to be “Chinese voter guides” or articles like the one

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published in the New York Herald that broadcast how “China is united for Harrison.

This name is inscribed on the prayer sticks of every joss house in America”

Despite these attacks, Harrison was able to win victory in the “Western” states

of Oregon, Nevada, and California, where he defeated Grover Cleveland with 124,816

votes to 117,729 while carrying Monterey County. The California margin was close,

but it was his 1,047 vote margin of victory in New York that ultimately allowed him

to win the election while losing the nationwide popular vote.

These two issues continued to follow Harrison after he was elected presiden

and Harrison addressed these topics repeatedly in his public speeches. For example, in

his first State of the Union address he argued: “I have always been an advocate of the

use of silver in our currency.” He followed by speaking about how “The enforcement

of the Chinese exclusion act has been found to be very difficult on the northwestern

frontier” and commented in favor of new regulations surrounding Chinese

immigration.

HARRISON IN MONTEREY

On April 30, 1891, President Benjamin Harrison visited the city of Monterey

as part of a tour of Western and Southern states. His tour was covered widely in the

press and his stop in Monterey was reported upon both locally and nationally.

On May 1, the Chicago Tribune ran a column that described “Monterey’s

reception to Harrison.” According to the newspaper, the city’s “citizens made the

President’s visit, though short, an enjoyable one.” His reception, the paper reported,

“showed no abatement of the enthusiasm with which he has generally been greeted on

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the coast.” The president stayed at the Del Monte where, according to the May 1, 1891

issue of the Macon Telegraph, he was “informed that the Chinese emperor had

notified his minister at Washington of his unwillingness to receive Blair, the newly

appointed American minister” over a dispute about Blair’s support for the Chinese

Exclusion Act. The next day, Harrison was escorted to the city center by “a delegation

of the leading citizens of this place.” The President was given a “solid silver card

containing an engraving of the old customs-house inscribed: Old custom-house where

the first American flag was raised in 1846; greeting to our President, April 30, 1891.”

The President responded with a speech where he claimed: “our whole pathway

through the State of California has been paved with good will. We have been made to

walk upon flowers and our hearts have been touched and refreshed at every point by

the voluntary offerings of your hospitable people.”

The speech was, from all accounts, well received by the local population and

the President and his party then went on an afternoon trip out to the coast. During his

trip, the President came across a Chinese merchant, quite possibly at Point Alones.

The president stopped at the merchant’s stall to buy a sea-shell – but the merchant

wouldn’t accept his money. Apparently paper money was uncommon in the area and

the Chinese merchant couldn’t be convinced that it was good and legal tender. The

May 1, 1891 issue of the Chicago Tribune reported that “the President had to

exchange his bill for a silver dollar before the Chinaman would let him have the

trinket.”

News about this incident was repeated across the country, often under

headlines that played off national debates about the silver standard and the materiality

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of money: “Mr. Harrison’s Hard Money” read headline in the May 2 1891 issue of the

New York Herald describing Harrison’s visit to Monterey. The paper continued,

explaining how “The Chinaman eyed [the paper money] suspiciously and finally

refused to take it.”

The veracity of this story is questionable. Direct economic interactions

between the Chinese and their non-Chinese neighbors, as evidenced from the

archaeological excavations detailed in this dissertation, from oral history, and from the

historical record were quite common. By the time that this exchange was reported

upon, face-to-face transactions between the Chinese and their neighbors had been

common in Monterey for over thirty years. It is difficult to believe that members of a

community with such frequent trans-cultural commercial interactions would not, as the

newspaper accounts suggested, be knowledgeable about paper money. Furthermore,

money in various forms, including paper bank notes, regularly circulated in Southern

China and in California during this time period.

Despite its factual uncertainty, the story is one that would have implicitly

“made sense” to most of the newspaper’s readers, readers could get a chuckle out of

the “silly Chinaman” who recognizes neither legal tender nor the President. At another

level this story makes clear the politically salient character of the materiality of

money, as an archaeologist would say, money as an artifact, during this time period.

This story neatly and ideologically ties into narratives relating to money and

materiality. If you will recall, California during the late 19th century was undergoing a

major transformation in the form of money and monetary policy was heavily debated

and highly politicized. Greenbacks and other forms of paper money did not penetrate

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into California quickly, people instead generally preferred to use Spanish coinage,

gold dust, or credit exchanges, and various political factions made accepting U.S.

backed fiat paper money a particularly salient marker of patriotism and the ability to

participate in democratic self governance. During the civil war, for example,

acceptance or non-acceptance of paper money was seen as a decidedly political

statement(Ellison 1929).

What these newspaper accounts do, then, is feed from and build into the story

that residents of the Point Alones Village were fundamentally disarticulated from the

modern economic life in Monterey. The point is made bluntly when the Chinese

individual refuses to accept American money from the most American individual in

the country - the President of the United States. Likely played for a laugh, this story

was repeated across the country and served to reinforce the link between currency and

citizenship and the exclusion of the Chinese from that typology. This account also

serves to connect those other political forces in California that questioned paper

money with the Chinese and, by extension, with those who were not “proper

Americans.” By tying a form of money to a form of citizenship, these accounts

reinforce other descriptions of the Point Alones Village that highlight the “exotic” and

“Chinese” aspects of its materiality and downplay the “mundane” and “American.”

The coins recovered from the Point Alones Village, though only representing a

small part of the assemblage, tie this community into a complex series of politically

charged social and economic exchanges. In the next chapter I continue to explore

these themes, discussing how they were articulated through ceramic objects.

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 CHAPTER 7: CERAMIC CHINA STANDING FOR CHINA

“[Chinese] curiosity is unbounded. They are ingenious in their way of making knick-
knacks, - puzzles, porcelain, bamboo chairs and baskets, - but they cannot
comprehend machinery” (Coffin 1869: 248).

“The greatest industrial city of China is not one of the treaty ports, where the direct
influence of Western progress is constantly felt, but a bustling interior city of Kiangsi
Province – Jingdezhen (also King-teh-chen, King-te-chin or Chang-nan-chen). This is
the famous porcelain and pottery center of the nation – indeed, it is the original home
of the porcelain industry of the world” (Lentz 1920: 393).

INTRODUCTION

In contrast to the coins, the ceramic assemblage of CA-MNT-104 represents

the largest class of “domestic” artifacts by count, weight, and MNI. Ceramic artifacts

from the Chinese occupation of the Point Alones Village were found in every unit on-

site with the exception of a small number of “test units” from the November field

season. Furthermore, Chinese ceramics were even commonly found during surface

surveys. This portion of the assemblage is constantly being revealed through natural

processes - gophers push small shards to the surface, pounding waves erode the

coastline, and winter storms wash up water-worn shards of Chinese and non-Chinese

ceramics alongside sea shells and other flotsam.

When I first visited the Hopkins Marine Station and asked about the presence

of Chinese looking artifacts I was inevitably told about the ceramics that would

regularly wash up on the beach. This feature of the site proved particularly useful

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when descendants, teachers, and other individuals would visit the site. To emphasize

the physical presence of Chinese Americans on the landscape I would take visitor to

one particularly sheltered inlet that had been used by the Chinese fishermen to draw

their boats out from the water and begin cleaning their catch. While at this site I would

explain how attempts by the Pacific Improvement Company to “clean up” the site and

eliminate all visible signs of the presence of the Chinese in the area ultimately failed

because even now, over a hundred years later, artifacts that testify to the Chinese

presence still regularly wash up on the shore. After poking around the sea-shells for a

few minutes, one of the group members would inevitably spot a water-worn ceramic

shard resting on the surface of the beach. Even though these artifacts are neither as

dramatic nor as evocative as the Chinese coins, their commonality and enduring

material qualities allow them to serve as an instrument through which the links

between the past and the present are made visible. They serve this role more strongly

than any other artifact class.

While these ceramics do not have the same ‘purchase’ as the coins found at

CA-MNT-104 in immediately exciting the imagination of visitors, the media, museum

directors, and even archaeologists when on site, they were still regarded as a generally

“interesting” artifact (in contrast to most of the metal, faunal, glass, and wood artifacts

that rarely engendered a second glance by visitors and archaeologists). People who

stopped by the site enjoyed looking at the ceramics and would often ask questions of

them, particularly questions concerning their origin and function. Interest in these

ceramics was not uniform across the typology. Certain ceramic objects drew more

attention than others. Plain earthenwares and terracotta fragments hardly merited a

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glance before being thrown into level bags, to emerge briefly for processing,

weighing, sorting, and cataloging in the lab, only to return to their sealed containers.

Other ceramics drew attention that rivaled the coins. The small “Chinese” porcelain

spoons and the decorated “tiny cups” enchanted visitors and archaeologists alike.

In contrast to their “secondary” status on-site and in the minds of the general

public when compared to the coins and other “small finds,” Ceramics are far and away

the artifact class that other archaeologists most commonly want to discuss when I

engage in academic discussions about the results of excavation. When I do discuss the

ceramics with other archaeologists, there is a casual use of terminology, a kind of in-

group speech that dominates the conversation. While this is true to greater or lesser

extent with every artifact class (how many non-archaeologists casually know the

history and difference between a square, round, and forged nails?), the “inside

language” of ceramics seems to bubble to the surface to a degree that no other artifact

class compares. “Bamboo, Four Seasons, Celadon, Whiteware, Porcelain.” These are

categories that casually roll off the lips of archaeologists. E-mails that I receive from

other archaeologists with questions about overseas Chinese sites inevitably center on

ceramic typology and ceramic frequencies. In these conversations I am regularly asked

about the presence and design details of transfer prints and the relative frequency of

Staffordshire plates as a part of the larger assemblage.

An archaeological interest in ceramics is not simply confined to those of us

working at overseas Chinese sites. Indeed, the archaeologists’ particular fascination

with fired clay is well known, and extends across time and space. Ceramics, of course,

by their design and materials make for almost the perfect archaeological artifact. They

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break easily and are discarded readily, yet they preserve in many contexts where

faunal material, basketry, and cloth might decay. Furthermore, ceramics have long

been used as an index marker for “civilization.” For Lewis Henry Morgan, the

development of pottery was the technological marker that, together with symbolic

language and social stratification, denoted a society’s transition from savagery to

barbarism. In his words “the human race was now successfully launched upon its great

career for the attainment of civilization, which even then, with articulate language

among inventions, with the art of pottery among arts, and with the gentes among

institutions, was substantially assured” (Morgan 1877: 527). The focus on pottery as a

marker for “complex societies” has not been limited to typological slots in an

evolutionary framework. Claude Levi-Strauss, for example, cites pottery, along with

weaving, agriculture, and the domestication of animals, as one of the “great arts of

civilization” (Levi-Strauss 1966: 13).

Just a stone’s throw away from the site of the Point Alones Village is a place

where California Indians gathered products from the sea and buried their dead. But,

like most California Indians, the ancestors of the Ohlone peoples did not regularly

produce and use pottery. There seems to have been no need, as incredibly

sophisticated basketry technology served a functionally equivalent purpose in much of

California (Lightfoot and Parrish 2009). Unfortunately, the anthropological equation

of “pots” with “civilization” lead to many descriptions of “simple” California Indians

and bolstered attempts by government agents to place them lower on the “evolutionary

ladder” and emphasize their supposed “savage nature.”

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 Although a simple equation of pots with complexity or with civilization may

not be tenable, the fascination that archaeologists have with pottery is understandable.

As was mentioned, ceramics make for an almost ideal archaeological artifact from a

physical perspective: They are portable and are commonly found on a diverse range of

archaeological sites throughout the world. They often have stylistic forms and

technological manufacturing processes that are possible to date, and form the core of

many “culture history” typological reconstructions. The datability of ceramics

becomes even more exact during and after the industrial revolution when British

ceramic manufacturers, desperate to copy Chinese-produced wares, quickly changed

the look and content of their wares with various stylistic and technological

innovations.

Pottery was clearly an important technology for many individuals and societies

in the past. It was a technology commonly adopted across the world and it has served

very useful purposes - both technological and social - for the cultures that invented

and adopted the use of ceramics, but the case of California Indians makes any direct

link between the presence of pottery and the sophistication of a culture impossible to

sustain. It also makes it clear that the particular importance that archaeologists often

impute to ceramics may not necessarily map onto the fascination that these objects

held to non-archaeologists in the past or in the present.

It is within this history that I discuss the ceramics found during excavations at

the site of the Point Alones Chinese Village. I explain the types of ceramic artifacts

that have been found at the Point Alones Village and I discuss how their active use at

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the Point Alones Village created and reflected a series of constrained social

possibilities.

Ceramic artifacts made in China, as well as ceramic artifacts that merely

‘look’ Chinese, have long been held up as the premier technological and material

signifier for China. Indeed, the linguistic slippage between China (the country) and

china (the porcelain) points towards the central role of ceramics in Western social

imaginaries of China. The origin of the Sanskrit word “Chīna,” “is still a matter of

debate” (Oxford English Dictionary) but by 1555 words analogous to “China” in

English had come to refer to an Asian country and by 1634 it had also come to refer to

the ceramic (Oxford English Dictionary). Indeed, this slippage often amused the

Chinese, including one Qing era official who, decrying what he saw as the decline in

Chinese porcelain quality, wrote:

It is said that translators render the words ‘Chinese porcelain’ as ‘China’, an

abbreviation for ‘China porcelain’. Thus the whole world looks to China as the
land of porcelain. Lately our Chinese porcelain industry has fallen into a
decline; and the reason why its world-wide fame still appears unenfeebled in
the eyes of the world is its old porcelain. Natives of the Middle Kingdom
cannot make their country formidable in terms of stout ships and penetrating
guns; nor again can they compete in the market-place with their labour and
materials. That they should simply rely on the fame of the porcelain produced
in this country in early days as the sole ground for boasting so as to make the
peoples of the world regard this country as the country of porcelain - that is a
disgrace to our statesmanship. That we should live in this country and yet not
be thoroughly acquainted with the study of porcelain - that makes the world
laugh. That we should grow up in the homeland of porcelain and yet not know

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 the reason why our national porcelain is so famous - that is a blot on our own
society (Sayer 1959: 3).

By looking at how previous archaeologists have classified Chinese and non-

Chinese ceramics, and examining the various political-economic and social networks

that resulted in many of these artifacts being crated, styled in a certain way, and

transported thousands of miles across multiple oceans, I argue that these trajectories

and transformations constituted and perpetuated the mutual imbrication of ideas and

things.

CHINESE ARTIFACTS AND OVERSEAS CHINESE ARCHAEOLOGY

Although they may not have the same overall cachet as coins, Chinese

ceramics that were produced in China for the domestic and overseas Chinese market

(as opposed to Chinese ceramics purchased for overseas export to non-Chinese) have

been at the center of debate and discussion in archaeological studies of the overseas

Chinese for as long as archaeologists have studied this particular community. These

“‘highly distinctive’ ceramics are “ubiquitous at Asian American archaeological sites”

(Staski 2009: 352) and have served as a strong index marker for Chinese ethnicity:

During archaeological survey and excavation of overseas Chinese sites, much like in

18th century English parlors (Porter 2010), china often stands for China. These

artifacts represent a very clear “Chinese” artifact that archaeologists have long used to

show definite commercial links that stretch “back” to China (Wegars 1993a). As

Staski explains, “the abundance of [Chinese] stoneware vessels is commonly used as

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evidence for the heroic efforts immigrants made to maintain their traditional diet,

while the presence of the [Chinese] porcelains is thought to reflect the continuation of

the traditional table service” (Staski 2009: 352).

Of course, ceramics manufactured in China are not only found at overseas

Chinese archaeological sites. China had a strong and robust export trade (detailed later

in this chapter) that has long stretched around the world. Chinese-produced ceramics

had been a staple luxury object in European and American households of certain

classes for centuries before the American annexation of California (Deetz 1977; Hume

1969; Berg 2004) and ceramics produced in China have even been found during

archaeological excavations or Spanish and Mexican colonial sites in California (Dado

2006). Indeed, Olsen has argued that:

Oriental (probably predominantly Chinese) ceramics were used by

revolutionary soldiers during the War of Independence in the United States. It
is important to note the temporal continuity of sites containing Chinese cultural
remains, especially ceramics. It would appear that once introduced into the
United States, Chinese porcelain became an integral part of the American
ceramic assemblage (Olsen 1978: 6).

The Chinese ceramics that have served as index markers for Chinese ethnicity

for historical archaeologists working in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and

Australia, are those “traditional Asian ceramics” (Staski 2009: 352) that were

ostensibly made for the domestic Chinese or overseas Chinese markets (Costello et al.

1996). Archaeologists have long slotted these vessels into a different typological

category from those Chinese ceramics that were ostensibly made for a European

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market, or, at least, were not made for poor Chinese immigrants, and that are found at

non-Chinese archaeological sites throughout the world (Orser 2007). This distinction

is made even though ceramics for the domestic and overseas markets were quite

possibly produced in the same cities and even may have been fired in the same kilns.

Praetzellis summarizes this literature when she explains how:

Questions regarding the ‘ethnic markers’ of overseas Chinese material culture

were resolved by archaeologists decades ago: the overseas Chinese brought
with them distinctive ceramics and foodways. The important issues for
historical archaeology - or local history for that matter - are not which goods
the Overseas Chinese used, but how this groups used, reused, and adapted
them, in what quantities, and for what outcomes in particular locations
(Praetzellis 2004: 259).

ANALYZING OVERSEAS CHINESE CERAMICS

Questions of typology have occupied a considerable amount of space in the

study of ceramics found at overseas Chinese archaeological sites (Voss and Allen

2008). In particular, debates about proper names for ware types or decorative

techniques permeate the literature. These debates ask questions such as: Is a particular

decoration style called ‘double happiness’ or ‘sweet pea?’ or is a particularly shaped

stoneware jar properly called a “soy pot” or a “spouted jar?” Much of this typological

impulse, Olsen argues, was an “attempt to fill in the gaps concerning the history, use,

and development of Chinese ceramics of this period” (Olsen 1978: 4). Then, as now,

archaeologists were attempting to compile information about Chinese porcelain and

Chinese ceramics that were more comprehensive than the works of art historians and

auction houses that, as Olsen argued, tended to focus on “only the very finest

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porcelain made in China for export to wealthy individuals and businesses ” (Olsen

1978: 4). Over time, archaeologists have settled on consistent terminology for most of

the tablewares and many of the stoneware vessels commonly found at overseas

Chinese archaeological sites in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New

Zealand.

For the purposes of this dissertation I describe ceramics following Roberta

Greenwood’s 1996 analysis of artifacts recovered from the 1987-1992 excavations at

the site of the Los Angeles Chinatown (Greenwood 1996). The terminology used by

Greenwood tends to align with commonly used terminology from other sources, such

as the Asian American Comparative Collection at the University of Idaho in Moscow,

ID (Wegars 2008). Some authors debate the validity of some of terms, for example,

Muller 1987 has a long discussion in the ceramics section of the multivolume Wong

Ho Leun: An American Chinatown (Great Basin Foundation 1987), and those debates

will be noted in the glossary provided below, but the particular set of terms that I will

be using have become what Kautz and Risse have identified as “relatively common

textbook terms” (Kautz and Risse 2006: 93). My typology here is brief and readers

interested in a more thorough and detailed discussion of ceramic typology are

encouraged to consult one of the many sources on the topic (e.g. Lister and Lister

1989; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1997; Muller 1987; Greenwood 1996; Wegars 2001,

2008). This typology is also followed by many archaeologists working outside of the

United States (Lydon 1999). It is important, though, to remember that these are terms

and classifications that archaeologists have developed to serve our typological and

analytical purposes. Even though some of the names for ware types and decorations

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are Chinese or come from transliterations of Chinese terminology, these classifications

as a whole are not emic (see Sando and Felton [1993] for an explanation of the source

of many of these terms). A Chinese immigrant or Chinese American in the 19th

century may very well have classified and/or categorized these artifacts according to

different material, stylistic, or functional typologies.

ASIAN-PRODUCED CERAMICS FOUND IN MONTEREY AND THEIR

POSSIBLE ORIGINS

By the 19th century, porcelain and porcelaneous stoneware production in

China had long since developed into a highly regulated industry with a small number

of primary production centers throughout China. The largest of these was at

Jingdezhen. The city had a long history of ceramic production. Chronicling the

importance of this center, Rawson has noted that:

Vast kiln complexes have manufactured porcelain at Jingdezhen since at least

AD 1000. Exported to South-east Asia, the Near East and Europe, these
porcelains have inspired the ceramic industries of many other countries.
Indeed, all white tableware is ultimately descended from fine, translucent,
white bowls and dishes that countries around the world purchased from China
(Rawson 1985: 351).

The city and its many kilns are located approximately 650 miles from Guangzhou and

about 800 miles from Beijing (Dillon 1992). Comparing this distance to the 150 miles

that separates London from Staffordshire - the primary porcelain and porcelaneous

stoneware manufacturing district in England - highlights both the extensive

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centralization of Chinese ceramic production and the highly developed internal trade

networks that had been present in the country for centuries. Indeed, Finlay argues that

in the early 1700s the city’s porcelain was “the largest industrial complex in the

world” (Finlay 2010: 18). But some scholars warn about the emphasis placed by

Western scholars upon the Jingdezhen kilns. For example, LI suggests that the

“preference in Western collections for Chinese imperial wares has tended to obscure

the importance of regional artifacts. Local ceramic industries, which played a

significant part in the history of China’s output, are generally neglected” (Li 1996: 9).

It is possible that some of the tablewares found at the Point Alones Village

were manufactured at Jingdezhen. Indeed Fang explains how some Chinese merchants

“fired white porcelain in Jingdezhen and shipped it to Canton, and would then hire

other artisans to imitate Western paintings and add colored decoration to the white

porcelain” (Fang 2010: 132). The distance of the kilns at Jingdezhen from Guangzhou

was viewed by Chinese officials as a way to protect Chinese manufacturing secrets

from Europeans desperate to copy their techniques. Schonfeld has described how:

The Chinese, who had a vested interest in their monopoly on porcelain, tried to
keep the secrets of its production from the European merchants, and for two
generations they seem to have succeeded. Foreign ships were permitted to
dock at only one harbor, Guangzhou, during the seventeenth century. Porcelain
production was centralized at one town, Jingdezhen, in the inland province of
Jiangxi, and the overland travel of Europeans was severely limited (Schonfeld
1998: 717).

Chinese porcelain manufactures had a keen interest in understanding and catering to

the European and North American markets. One Qing era official wrote that: “The

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Japanese like clean monochrome porcelain...The French merchants support five color;

they take no account of damage or cracks however severe. The English merchants love

blue-and-white. Recently the price has dropped sharply; but not for top class pieces”

(Sayer 1959: 24). Continuing to differentiate the ceramic tastes of different nations,

the official continues, explaining how “The American merchants prefer red or sky-

blue official ware, what the public calls the ‘single coat of glaze’; paying especial

attention to vases and jars. The Germans in turn delight in vases and jars in ‘carpet

bag’ blue/green” (Sayer 1959: 24).

Despite the centralization of production at Jingdezhen, and the massive output

of the city’s industry, other kilns existed throughout China, some of which

manufactured porcelain tablewares and were located closer to Guangzhou, including

kilns in Guangdong itself (Wood 1999). Indeed, during the time period when

emigrants from Chinese first arrived in Monterey the kilns at Jingdezhen were not in

production, having been destroyed during the Taiping rebellion in 1853 and “not

rebuilt until a decade later” (Jones 1992: 14), a series of events that undoubtedly

affected the distribution of ceramics across China. The presence of these kilns and the

clear and extensive trade networks that existed across China makes it possible that

Asian porcelains and porcelainous stonewares of each decorative type were

transported hundreds if not thousands of miles from their location of manufacture to

the port from which they left China (most likely Guangzhou). It is also quite possible

that the tablewares were made in Guangdong kilns and only transported a short

distance to the port of Guangzhou. This is in stark contrast to the Asian stoneware

vessels found at the Point Alones Village (and at many other overseas Chinese sites).

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These vessels were almost certainly produced locally in southern China, either at large

stoneware production facilities such as the kilns at Shiwen or in one of thousands of

small local workshops. Shiwan, which remains a ceramic manufacturing center, is

located a mere 20 kilometers from Guangzhou. During the 19th century the city had a

robust stoneware trade where guilds controlled a stoneware production process that

included specialization of labor, the establishment and perpetuation of international

trade routes, and a complex industrial manufacturing process that firmly planted China

at the leading edge of utilitarian ceramic production in the 19th century.

In addition to the large manufacturing centers there were thousands of small

local workshops where stoneware vessels were created. One such facility that is

commonly (and luridly) described in European travelogues was located at Canton

(Guangzhou) “execution grounds.” Scott, for example, wrote “It is not curious that in

the East a ‘potter’s field,’ or, at any rate, a yard for the manufacture of pottery, shall be

used for the execution of criminals? Here, among mud, stenches indescribable, old

potsherds, and a wilderness of squalor, do their criminals to death in Old China” (Scott

1894: 174). Another traveler claimed that “one noticeable feature of the ground is, its

being literally a Potter’s field. When there are no executions, the yard is used daily for

drying pottery in the sun” (Bonney 1875: 225). Bird described the place as “this ‘field

of blood,’ which counts its slain by tens of thousands, is also a ‘potter’s field,’ and is

occupied throughout its whole length by the large earthen pots which the Chinese use

instead of tubs, either in process of manufacture or drying in the sun” (Bird 1883:

101).

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 Asian produced ceramics that were intended for the domestic or overseas

Chinese market are often divided into two board categories based primarily on

functional qualities. Greenwood explains that these are “stoneware containers - used to

import foodstuffs - and porcelain vessels - in which the foods were served”

(Greenwood 1996: 67). Although Asian stonewares and Asian porcelains show a

significant amount of variation within each functional category, their stylistic and

functional difference has lead to their classification into separate analytic categories

for most analyses of ceramics found on overseas Chinese sites. As mentioned, they

were also likely fired in different kilns and had different object-biographies prior to

their entry into the site.

ASIAN STONEWARE

The category “Asian stoneware” covers a wide range of stoneware vessels that

primarily served as storage containers for food and drink. Muller writes that these

vessels are often “referred to as ‘brownware’ or ‘brown stoneware’” (Muller 1987:

233) and that “sherds of utilitarian stoneware are virtually ubiquitous on an

archaeological site associated with Chinese pioneers. Colors on these wares, however,

range from a bright watermelon green on some shouldered jars, green or blue-green on

small shouldered hexagonal ‘ginger’ jars, to dull black or shiny blue-black on some of

the traditional ‘liquor bottle’ shapes” (Muller 1987: 233). Despite this diversity of

shape, size, and form, the “vast majority of forms, however, are characterized by

glazes in shades of brown, ranging from light tans and yellowish browns to very dark

browns and (to the eye) black” (Muller 1987: 233). Greenwood explains that the form

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of these containers has an “ancient” pedigree and classifies the Los Angeles

assemblage primarily according to vessel function (Greenwood 1996: 79). For

example, naming vessels “Soy Sauce Jar,” “Large Shipping Jar,” “Globular Jar,” or

“Ginger Jar.” (Muller 1987: 234) has critiqued the archaeological practice of

typologizing and ordering these ceramics based upon presumed function when he

argues:

Not all utilitarian stoneware forms were used for shipping foodstuffs, and there
is a general confusion regarding the accepted uses of many forms. [Further]
confusion caused by the introduction of specific functional terminology to
vessels having varied, unknown, or generic uses is a hindrance to further
research (Muller 1987: 234).

The stoneware vessels found at the Point Alones Village were likely

manufactured in local kilns near the port from which they were shipped across the

Pacific, almost certainly Guangzhou or Hong Kong. As Medely has argued, “The

stonewares made during the sixteenth century and probably into the present age, came

mainly from kilns in the south reasonabley near the coast” (Medely 1976: 217). When

I traveled to Guangdong after conducting excavations at the Point Alones Village, I

visited ceramic kilns at the city of Shiwan, a small village located a short distance

outside of Guagngzhou and one likely source for the Asian stonewares found at 19th

century overseas Chinese sites in North America. Although, as Scollard and

Bartholomew explain, “literature on Shiwan is scarce,” (Scollard and Bartholomew

1995: 10). Despite the scarcity of historical information about the city, Scollard and

Bartholomew suggest that it:

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 Has been exporting pottery in large quantities to all parts of Southeast Asia
since the Song dynasty. By the 18th century, Guangzhou was already an
important trading port, exporting its ceramics and other products all the way to
Europe; some of these products even found their way to the Chinese
settlements in North America during the 19th century. The majority of the
pottery produced in Shiwan was for everyday use, for example, common
household wares like wine containers, cooking utensils, pots, and vases. Other
articles produced by highly skilled artisans include figurines representing both
ordinary people and famous characters in history and folktale (Scollard and
Bartholomew 1995: 10).

The pottery museum in the town of Shiwan extensively details the various guilds and

societies that produced stoneware ceramics and that targeted different markets,

including the California overseas Chinese market. It is certain that at least some

Shiwan stoneware ended up in California and it is quite likely that several pieces

ended up at the Point Alones Village. As Scollard and Bartholomew explain:

California has been a rich depository of Shiwan ware since the 1850s
emigration of Chinese from the Pearl River delta region in Guangdong
Province. These settlers brought with them utensils made in Shiwan. They
furnished their Chinese temples with gilt wood later cavings, tiles and roof
decorations, statues, alter appurtenances, and bronze bells that were especially
commissioned form the Shiwan-Foshan area (Scollard and Bartholomew 1995:
10).

At the Point Alones site, the vast majority of the Asian stoneware consisted of

unidentifiable fragments of brown-glazed wares. There were some spout fragments,

jar openings, and base fragments containing identifiable features that were recovered.

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These identifying features, when present, were noted on the catalog record form and

can be found in the project catalog.

ASIAN PORCELAIN (PORCELANEOUS STONEWARE)

In contrast to the stoneware vessels, which seem to primarily have been

produced for the shipping and storage of goods and foodstuffs prior to consumption,

artifacts classified as “Asian porcelain” were primarily tablewares and dining utensils

and were intended for use as serving vessels. These ceramics were produced in China

(and possibly Japan) at large industrial kilns. Archaeologists typically classify these

ceramics according to decorative theme and according to function. A common series

of decorative motifs is present on many of the ceramics found on overseas Chinese

sites across the Pacific. There is some debate about the proper terms by which these

ceramic decorative motives should be called. In this dissertation I am following the

lead of Greenwood (1996) whose terminology largely overlaps with terminology used

by the Asian American Comparative Collection and numerous other publications from

archaeological reports of the overseas Chinese, including Sando and Felton’s (1993)

article outlining many of the research questions and typological distinctions that later

archaeologists have used to analyze these ceramics.

BAMBOO

In Greenwood’s words, these are “thick walled and heavy, with a sharply

carinated shoulder just above the foot and a rolled rim. Bodies tend to be gray and of a

course texture, containing more grog than the translucent porcelains. Under the glaze

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are hand-painted cobalt blue plant forms, circles, and representations interpreted as

dragonflies” (Greenwood 1996: 54). Vessels of this design are commonly known as

“bamboo,” following translations of “terminology established by Ruth Ann Sando and

David L. Felton’s report on the translation of inventory records from a 19th century

Chinese store in California” (Wegars 1987: 113). Greenwood adds that “Three Circles

and Dragonfly” (Greenwood 1996: 53) is also common nomenclature for these

vessels. Bamboo ware vessels are widely reported as being “cruder” than other vessels

and Felton et al. suggest that “this pattern has also been referred to in the

archaeological literature as Longevity, Sawtow, or Blue Flower ware” (Felton et al.

(1984: 24). Muller disputes this designation, calling the pattern “three friends.” He

argues that previous terminology does not accurately describe the patterns on the

vessel: “Three circles and ‘Dragonfly/Butterfly/Longevity’” designation, he argues,

“has been based on two of the lesser and still unascribed design elements. The ‘three

circles’ often are reduced to a scrawling meander, and the dragonfly or ling chih

fungus often are too stylized to provide any degree of identification” (Muller 1987:

272). Instead, Muller argues, “whatever symbolism is contained therein has continued

to elude researchers. The major design element on this ware is not ‘Bamboo’

alone...but a rendition of plantain tree, rock, and bamboo proceeding from left to

right” (Muller 1987: 272). Because the emic designation of these design elements is

“three friends,” he concludes, suggesting, “it is meaningful to classify these wares

under this heading” (Muller 1987: 272). As Muller explains, these “three friends

(bamboo, rock, plantain) are symbolic of ‘gentlemanly virtue’ and relate to the

Confucian standards and ethics of proper behavior; they are also symbolic of Taoism,

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Buddhism, and Confucianism” (Muller 1987: 310). Despite these warnings, in this

document I refer to this decorative type as “bamboo.” This is done in a descriptivist

sense. Bamboo is the most common and most commonly understood terminology used

by archaeologists for these vessels. Greenwood writes that this decorative type “occurs

only as rice bowls” (Greenwood 1996: 52). All of the ceramics in this style that were

excavated from the Point Alones Village and that could be identified were bowls of

the sort that archaeologists have traditionally called “rice bowls,” further corroborating

Greenwood’s observation. Regarding their design, Felton et al. write that of vessels,

“while the number, relative placement, and identity of the decorative elements is

consistent, their specific treatment varies widely. Overall, these vessels appear to have

been hurriedly decorated. Although rice bowls of this style are common on North

American sites, other vessel forms are rare” (Felton et al. 1984: 24). An example of a

vessel in this style recovered from the Point Alones Village can be seen in [Figure

7.1].

FOUR FLOWERS

The second major design motif that is commonly found on overseas Chinese

sites is the “four flowers” decoration. Unlike the bamboo decorative motif, the four

flowers decorative motif is found on a wide variety of different ware types that

represent the full suite of a “proper” Chinese table setting. This diversity in form is

remarked upon by Greenwood who discusses its presence in “serving bowls, rice

bowls, tea and wine bowls, spoons, condiment dishes, and plates.” She further notes:

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 Many of the teapots with polychrome floral designs would have seemed to
match. Here as elsewhere, all the serving bowls and most of the various size
plates are of this style. All pieces are hand painted over the glaze in
polychrome enamel floral symbolic of the annual seasons, with the peach in
the center of the interior signifying longevity. The seasons are represented by
the cherry for winter, water lily/lotus for summer, peony for spring, and
chrysanthemum for autumn (Greenwood 1993: 70),

Felton et al. write that this ware type was “the most common Chinese

tableware present” at their site. They explain that “The primary decorative elements

are four flowers representing different seasons: prunes (winter); lotus (summer); tree

peony (spring); and chrysanthemum (fall)” (Felton et al. 1984: 25). Muller notes that

this ware type is called:

Four Seasons (also called Four Flowers, Enamelled Flower Ware, and Rose
Verte). The four flowers depicted (prunes = winter, beauty; peony = spring,
wealth; lotus = summer, purity; chrysanthemum = autumn, friendship) on all of
these forms symbolically represent the changing of the seasons. Since they
constitute the primary design, the ware is appropriately named. On most of the
specimens a centrally located “Peach of Immortality” is present […] All of the
elements taken together very likely convey the sense and wish for a long life
(Muller 1987: 273).

Other archaeologists have suggested that the depicted flowers represent different

seasons. Greenwood (1993) for example, cites cherry as the “winter” flower. Unlike

the bamboo type, there is general consensus on the overall meaning of the design. An

example of a vessel in this style recovered from the Point Alones Village can be seen

in [Figure 7.1].

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CELADON

The third major design motif found on ceramics excavated from overseas

Chinese communities is the “celadon” pattern. Many archaeologists are careful to note

that these are not the same kinds of vessels as the earlier (and vastly more expensive)

fine celadon ceramics that were produced in the imperial kilns for upper-class

domestic and foreign consumption. As Greenwood writes, these vessels "may more

properly be called Celadon type because they are variable in quality and rarely possess

the depth and richness of the classical Chinese glazes” (Greenwood 1993: 70). Muller

traces the etymology of the term, pointing out that “The French term ‘celedon’ is a

more or less generic one for a group of wares produced and exported during the Sung

Dynasty[…]This term is not applicable to the more modern vibrant-colored, thinner,

un-sculptured descendant found at overseas Chinese sites” (Muller 1987: 271). Instead

of the term celadon, he prefers to refer to these wares as “Pale Green Jade.” Vessels

with this decorative motif are a light green in color and rarely have additional

decorative elements (occasionally there will be a mark on the base of the vessel and/or

the rim of the vessel will be white or brown). Greenwood notes that the glaze of these

vessels is “much the same as used for stonewares but with less iron oxide”

(Greenwood 1993: 70). Celadons are usually represented by smaller vessels -

especially tea cups and tiny cups - and larger examples are uncommon across Chinese

Overseas sites (Greenwood 1993). Hellmann and Yang suggest that the vessels might

come in more heterogeneous forms than was imagined, arguing that “celadon is a

popular Chinese porcelain ceramic that is frequently found on Overseas Chinese

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archaeological sites” (Hellmann and Yang 1997: 156). They present a collection of

celadon artifacts that includes “plates, medium bowls, spoons, and tiny cups”

(Hellmann and Yang 1997: 156). The excavations at Point Alones revealed 35 (MNI)

Celadon vessels including 5 (MNI) “tiny cups” and 1 (MNI) “large bowl.” Stenger

(1993: 325) has use elemental trace analysis to argue that these vessels were produced

in Japan which, if true, further exposes the extent to which these communities were

woven into a global trade in goods and aesthetics. An example of a vessel in this style

recovered from the Point Alones Village can be seen in [Figure 7.3].

DOUBLE HAPPINESS

Although in general this ware type is less common than the preceding three

ware types, it remains one of the more commonly found ceramics at overseas Chinese

sites and was included as a nodal point in Sando and Felton’s (1993) benchmark study

of ceramics vessels at overseas Chinese sites. Greenwood writes that this vessel type is

“among the earliest and cheapest and occurs only rarely after the 1860s” (Greenwood

1996: 70). She further explains, “under the glaze these bowls are painted in blue; they

are not to be confused with overpainted, enamel Double Happiness symbols which are

interspersed among other designs on tea and wine bowls. The bodies are a thick, grey

porcelaneous stoneware with a rolled rim and dry ring foot...” (Greenwood 1996: 70).

Muller (1987: 271) calls these vessels “Shuang Hsi,” which is his translation of the

Chinese term “double happiness.” He argues that calling these vessels “double

happiness” is appropriate because the Chinese character that is abstractly represented

on the vessel is the term “Hsi”(meaning happiness) and that it is written twice (the

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term “shuang” roughly translates as double). The character represented on the “double

happiness” vessel is a common motif in China. For example, it is regularly used as a

New Year greeting and is prominently displayed during weddings where it is said to

bring luck and good tidings. In following with Greenwood’s prediction that the

presence of these vessels diminishes on overseas Chinese sites that postdate the 1860s,

not a single example of this particular decorative type was found in excavations at the

Point Alones Chinese Village. Although, due to sample size and depositional patterns,

it is certainly possible that this ware type was used by residents of the Point Alones

Village, its absence from the archaeological assemblage supports Greenwood’s

contention. An example of a vessel in this style recovered from a Chinese settlement

in Santa Cruz, CA can be seen in [Figure 7.4].

These four decorative types: bamboo, four flowers, celadon, and double

happiness, are the primary categories that archaeologists have used to classify Asian

porcelain. With the exception of double happiness, these ceramic decorative types

make up the bulk of the “Asian” ceramics found during the excavations at the Point

Alones Village.

Different explanations have been given for the changes that archaeologists

have observed in overseas Chinese ceramic assemblages over time, attempting to

ascertain why vessels like double happiness are not found at sites like the Point Alones

Village. Layton summarizes two of these explanations. The first was provided by

Adrian Praetzellis who:

Attributed the heterogeneity of Chinese styles during the 1850s to a poorly

developed import trade supplying the Chinese community of the time. By the

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 1860s, he argued, the lines of supply to Chinese consumers in California had
become so well established as to be almost completely ossified. With only a
few large suppliers from the 1860s on, there was not much variety in the
ceramic styles used throughout the overseas Chinese diaspora (Layton 2002:
202).

The second explanation highlighted by Layton was given by Paul Chace who

suggested that the changes can be attributed:

Not to a poorly organized market of Chinese merchants in California, but to

the disruption of normal ceramic production in China [due to the Taiping
rebellion]. With the re-establishment of order, circa 1865, Paul surmised that
normal ceramic production would have resumed. California Chinese merchants
would then be able to import the cargoes of standardized ceramics that would
later be found (Layton 2002: 203).

CERAMICS AT CA-MNT-104

Tables 7.1 and 7.2 outline the tableware assemblage recovered from Chinese

contexts during excavations at CA-MNT-104.

At first glance, the ceramic assemblage recovered from CA-MNT-104 seems

similar to that of contemporaneously occupied overseas Chinese sites. The vast

majority of the ceramics that are clearly associated with the Chinese occupation of the

site are Asian stonewares, Asian porcelains (almost exclusively one of the primary

decorative types described above, excluding double happiness), and European- or

American-produced “white bodied wares” (Majewski and O’Brien 1987). Indeed,

while I was excavating the site and conducting laboratory analyses of the recovered

artifacts, the most remarkable aspect of the ceramic assemblage was its decidedly

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unremarkable composition. There were occasional ceramics that did not fit neatly into

one of these three categories, but the superficial similarity of the assemblage to that at

other overseas Chinese sites clearly demonstrates that the residents of the Point Alones

Village were tied into trade networks and maintained economic and social

relationships with other overseas Chinese communities throughout California.

Archaeologists have interpreted overseas Chinese ceramic assemblages

through at least four distinct (though not necessarily mutually exclusive) analytics.

Each of these analytics is rooted, implicitly or explicitly in a theoretical model

describing the relationship of ceramic artifacts and identity. In the following section I

describe these analytics and explain how these models variously illuminate and

obscure the experiences and social world of the Point Alones Village residents.

1. Archaeologists have attempted to analyze the internal variation of overseas

Chinese assemblages, especially regarding vessel form, and have attempted to

correlate this internal differentiation with socioeconomic and temporal factors.

The majority of this work follows the lead of Sando and Felton (1993) who

analyzed the store ledger of a Chinese merchant and noticed that Asian

ceramics with different decorative motifs were differentially priced. They

suggested that ratios of “expensive” and “inexpensive” ceramics might indicate

different “social classes” within overseas Chinese communities.

2. A second approach, exemplified in Praetzellis and Praetzellis (2001)

concentrates on the role that Chinese merchants played in mediating the types

of ceramics that were used by both the merchants and by Chinese laborers. In

particular, Praetzellis and Praetzellis argue that Chinese merchants strategically

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 used and displayed ceramics produced in Europe and/or America in public

settings in order to project a “genteel” and “civilized” image to their non-

Chinese neighbors while simultaneously using traditional Chinese ceramics in

private settings and restricting the supply of non-Chinese ceramics to Chinese

laborers, either as a deliberate strategy or out of convenience.

3. A third approach suggests that Chinese merchants and laborers used Chinese

ceramics because of a pervasive “cultural conservatism” (e.g. Felton et al.

1984: 89) and a longstanding preference for “traditional” design motifs (Staski

2009). These scholars note that the designs of Chinese ceramics, especially

stonewares, found on overseas Chinese stites were consistent over periods of

time and suggest that this persistence is explained in whole or part because of a

Chinese conservatism coupled with the “sojourner thesis” that suggests that

“the Chinese immigrant of the 19th century came not to establish permanent

residence in California, but to accumulate his earnings and return to China”

(Ritter 1986: 82).

4. A fourth approach, and one that is becoming increasingly common, is

exemplified particularly well in Lydon’s (1999) study of the Chinese

community in Sydney neighborhood “the Rocks.” These studies focus on the

“‘symbolic valence,’ or hybrid character of Chinese ceramics and their western

imitation” (Lydon 1999: 58) This approach asks how Chinese ceramics found

in Chinese, non-Chinese, and mixed contexts were differentially viewed and

used by Chinese and non-Chinese individuals and how these artifacts

articulated with other social and cultural productions. This approach turns

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 away from previous functionalist and instrumentalist interpretations of

ceramics to ask how these objects interpolated into various powerful local and

global discourses.

Each of these approaches balances political economy with the agency of

individuals, though these approaches conceptualize particular aspects of agency and

political economy in different ways and according to different standards. They each

point towards a complex political economy was influential in structured the social and

material conditions for the creation of goods in China and their transnational flows

across the Pacific. Each analytic provided emphasizes a different aspect of this

political economy. Some theories highlight the role that the imperial Chinese

government and the groups that controlled ceramic manufacturing centers in China

had in the creation of ceramics. Other theories focus on the role of merchants and

“powerful” or “wealthy” members of the Chinese diaspora in this political economy.

Other theories pivot away from these aspects of political economy and instead focus

on the ways that objects that may “look similar” to other objects; ceramics that may

come from similar manufacturing districts or pottery kilns might actually be

incorporated into radically different political and economic projects and be put to

diverse ends depending on their eventual destination.

I find aspects of each of these analytics to be illuminating and will now now

use the archaeological assemblage at CA-MNT-104 to comment upon each of these

analytics with the eventual goal of developing an interpretation of the ceramic

assemblage from the Point Alones Village that understands the polyvalence of these

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objects. Through these objects we can come to better understand a China that was

undergoing radical changes in consort with what Rofel has identified as a “pursuit of

modernity” that “coursed though its history throughout the late nineteenth and

twentieth centuries, as China first grappled with the semicolonialism that parceled out

the country among competing imperial powers and then established a socialist nation

state” (Rofel 1999: 24). We can also come to better understand the concrete

articulations of a global political economy that brought people, objects, aesthetics, and

discourses from disparate geographies together and, through these articulations,

rendered novel social forms. We can also, though these objects, better understand how

these objects constituted powerful social processes that affected Chinese and non-

Chinese individuals, and how, in turn, those groups cited and reconfigured those

arrangements.

THE CERAMIC ASSEMBLAGE AT CA-MNT-140

Numerous ceramic artifacts were recovered from CA-MNT-104. Ceramic

artifacts were found in almost every excavation or test unit and numerous ceramic

artifacts were recovered from the various surface surveys that were conducted on site.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, water-worn ceramic artifacts regularly

wash up on the beach after heavy storms. Despite this abundance, in this chapter I will

be limiting my analysis of the ceramic artifacts to those objects recovered from

contexts that are clearly associated with the Point Alones Village. The objects

recovered from other areas do not have the temporal or spatial resolution necessary to

make arguments that go beyond discussions of presence and absences.

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 As I discussed in Chapter 5, the units with layers that are clearly associated

with the Chinese occupation of the Point Alones Village and that contained intact

features include the four units associated with priority area 2 of the excavation [Figure

5.4]. These units were all located along the coast in areas of the site that would have

been the “main village” area - not the area of the site where large individual houses

were located. This is the area of the village that seems to have burned to the ground in

the 1906 fire and it is the area of the village where historical maps do not indicate the

ownership of buildings. For a description of the excavation that was conducted in

these areas, including soils and general artifact composition of each of these units,

refer to Chapter 5. The following units and levels represent the spatial location from

where the artifacts discussed were recovered:

N1012 E997. Levels 4 to 9

N1042 E980. Levels 10 to 16

N1054 E981. Levels 12 to 15

N 1054 E982. Levels 11 to 15

The following summary table outlines the frequency of the dominant decorative motifs

for Asian tableware vessels recovered from the above contexts:

Decorative Type: MNI Weight (g) Fragment Count

Bamboo 38 2,110.57 113

Celadon 34 279.24 76
Four Flowers 41 960.34 110

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APPROACH 1: VARIATION IN DECORATIVE MOTIF OF CERAMIC

ASSEMBLAGES FROM OVERSEAS CHINESE SITE

In 1993 Sando and Felton established a metric for understanding the “relative

value” of Chinese produced ceramics that are commonly found on overseas Chinese

sties. The authors used store ledgers from the “Kwong Tai Wo Company,” a company

that owned a store in a small town in California. The exact location of the store is

unknown, but Sando and Felton suspect that it was most likely in Marysville or Grass

Valley (Sando and Felton 1993: 153). The Chinese or Chinese American owner(s) or

clerk(s) of the store kept a ledger where they recorded the wholesale price of various

goods for a dozen years in the late 19th century (1871 and 1883). The authors suspect

that the ledger was penned by a single person, noting that the “handwriting changes

rarely” (Sando and Felton 1993: 153).

Although I am primarily interested in this article for its theory about “price”

and “class” among overseas Chinese communities, it is also a notable article because,

as Wegars explains, it introduced “new nomenclature” for ceramics that are “based

upon what the Chinese actually called the various decorations” (Wegars 1993a: 153).

In their economic analysis, Sando and Felton include a discussion of the following

wares. I have included my own pinyn translations of the characters present in the

ledger and commentary about the translations.

1. Bamboo. Sando and Felton (1993) call this decorative motif “green,” a direct

translation of the Chinese character 青 which was used in the ledger. This

character are spelled qing[1] in pinyn.

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2. Celadon. Sando and Felton (1993) call this decorative motif “winter green,” a

direct translation of the Chinese characters 冬青 which were used in the ledger.

These characters are spelled dong[1]qing[1] in pinyn. 冬 is the character for

“winter” and 青 is the character for “green.”

3. Four Flowers. Sando and Felton (1993) call this decorative motif “four

flowers” or “flowery,” a direct translation of the Chinese characters 四花

which were used in the ledger. These characters are pronounced si[4]hua[1] in

pinyn. 四 is the character for “four” and 花 is the character for “flower.” Sando

and Felton (1993) report that these vessels were sometimes simply recorded as

花.

4. Double Happiness. Sando and Felton (1993) call this decorative motif “double

happiness” a direct translation of the Chinese characters 雙喜 which were used

in the ledger. Sometimes vessels sold were simply listed as “喜,” and Sando

and Felton are not sure if these sales represent vessels with the same decorative

motif. The character 雙 is pronounced shuang[1] in pinyn and means double.

The character 喜 is pronounced xi[3] in pinyn. Happiness is an appropriate

translation of 喜.

5. There was also a category for British or American wares that Sando and Felton

translate as “Barbarian Plates.” In the ledger these were written as 番 which

is spelled fan[1]die[2] in pinyn. “Barbarian” is a reasonable translation of 番,

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 although the word has different connotations in China than it does in the West.

is also reasonably translated to mean “plate.”

6. There were several other categories of objects that were for sale in this store,

including “gold rim” design, Japanese ceramics (called “日本蘭花” in the

ledger, pronounced “Ri[4]ben[3] Lan[2]hua[1],” which I would translate as

“Japanese(日本) Orchard (蘭花)” and “prosperity” design. None of the vessels

appear to have been recovered from the Point Alones excavations.

Sando and Felton (1993) examined the sales prices for artifacts listed in the

ledgers as a “bowl” or as a “rice bowl” and compared the values of those vessels

across a variety of different decorative styles. They did not compare vessels that were

listed as having different forms (for example, spoons and plates). They noted a distinct

difference in the costs of the ceramics, with one grouping of relatively “expensive”

wares (Winter Green [Celadon], Four Flower, Large Prosperity Character, Flowers of

the Four Seasons [likely Four Flowers], and With Designs [likely Four Flowers]”

(Sando and Felton 1993: 163). These wares “range in value from 6.5 to 8.7 cents per

bowl” (Sando and Felton 1993: 163). These are contrasted to the “cheaper” category

that consisted of “Bamboo, Green, Double Happiness, Happiness, Two Prosperity

Characters, and Three Prosperity Characters” (Sando and Felton 1993: 163) that “have

an average value ranging from 2 to 5 cents each.” When considering the ledger records

in aggregate, the authors noted that “there is a general downward trend in the mean

values during the mid-1870s and into the early 1880” (Sando and Felton 1993: 163).

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They note that this trend “parallels the general downsizing in wholesale prices in the

United States during the period 1865-1896” (Sando and Felton 1993: 163).

Looking at the internal dynamics of the relative value of ceramics across time,

Sando and Felton note, “many more cheap than costly bowls were stocked in

comparable or greater numbers from 1876 to 1882” (Sando and Felton 1993: 165).

They suggest that this variation could either be caused by changing demographics and

consumer behavior in the community served by the store (a shift from a poorer

community to a more wealthy community), or that it could be caused by the changing

fortunes of the company, that “limited capital initially forced the merchant to stock

low-priced goods, which were later replaced by more costly commodities aimed at

more affluent markets as the company grew” (Sando and Felton 1993: 165).

There is some evidence that correlates ware type decorative motif with social

class. When Sando and Felton correlate these patterns with the archaeological

materials recovered from a number of different overseas Chinese sites they note that

“The cheaper Bamboo bowls constitute up to 80 percent of the Chinese tableware on

an 1880s railroad camp and other post-1870 rural construction and mining sites (e.g.

Briggs, 1974) while the Winter Green (Celadon) vessels are more common on many

post-1870 village and urban sites” (Sando and Felton 1993: 170). Despite the

importance of ceramics for archaeological research and the primary place that ceramic

artifacts have in archaeological reconstruction of past life, Sando and Felton note that

the trade in ceramics, at least in terms of the money exchanged and their value for the

merchants, pales in comparison to other goods that were sold through this wholesaler.

The trade in opium, in particular, was considerably more valuable for the merchant(s)

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running the Kwong Tai Wo Company. For example, the authors of the study explain

that “the total value represented by [the company’s] ceramic stock [between 1871 and

1883] amounted to only $266.80” but between 1873 and 1883 “the total value of

opium inventoried exceeded $2850.00.” (Sando and Felton 1993: 167).

Through their diligent and groundbreaking work, Sando and Felton established

a baseline hypothesis against which other overseas Chinese communities have

compared their assemblages. If one were to take the Sando and Felto argument and

apply in a proscriptive manner to the Point Alones Village than one would suspect that

the Point Alones Village was among the “wealthier” overseas Chinese communities.

The account of the ceramics recovered from the Point Alones Village shows that

celadon, bamboo, and four flowers vessels are present in roughly equal numbers by

MNI count. The Bamboo vessels tend to be larger and by weight they certainly

represent a larger portion of the assemblage than the celadon or four flowers vessels,

but they do not dominate the assemblage in the same way that these vessels dominate

other assemblages (Briggs 1974). If the four flowers vessels and the celadon vessels

are considered to both be examples of “expensive” ware types, and if these ware types

reflect social stratification, as Sando and Felton suggest, then it would follow that the

residents of the Point Alones Village consumed more expensive ceramics. This would

provide an interesting contrast to the many descriptions of the poverty in the village

that were given by non-Chinese individuals (examples of these descriptions are

presented in Chapter 4).

Although Sando and Felton’s analysis of the price of ceramics is certainly

important, I suspect that factors other than price may better explain the presence of so

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many “expensive” ware types at Point Alones. In particular, the range of ware types

available for each kind of decorative motif almost certainly guides the way that these

artifacts were used and the context in which they were used. Bamboo artifacts are

rarely found in forms other than medium and large bowls. These portable bowls may

have been ideal serving vessels for miners, railway workers, and other groups of

Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans who worked in occupations that required

high mobility where formal meals and banquets were rare. Their regularity and

fungibility may also be a reason why they seem to be the preferred choice among the

companies and wholesalers who supplied these mining communities: vessels with

multiple purposes and a regularity of form are easier to replace than irregular and less-

common ware types designed for a specific function. On the other hand, if one wanted

to set one’s table with a full suite of matching serving vessels, then bamboo ceramics

would not be an option. Four flowers, which came in a much wider variety of ware

types, would be an obvious alternative. Thus, the presence of large numbers of four

flowers vessels might not necessarily indicate that the Point Alones Village was a

wealthier community than the communities of laborers or “frontier” communities

where bamboo and double happiness vessels predominant, so much as it indicates that

full table settings were more important or more feasible among the residents of the

Point Alones Village. The relatively inexpensive character of all the commonly found

Asian porcelains (compared with the price of opium and other regularly consumed

goods), suggests that cost may not have been the determinative factor when an

individual or household purchased ceramic tablewares for food consumption and that

the fine grained distinctions in price made by archaeologists may not have been salient

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in the minds of the Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans who actually

purchased and used the vessels. This entire line of speculation, of course, presumes

that “consumers” or even merchants and wholesalers had the ability to choose between

several different decorative motifs, something that may not necessarily have been the

case.

APPROACH 2: STRATEGIC DISPLAY OF “GENTEEL” CERAMICS.

Another common approach to the study of the intra- and inter- site variability

of Chinese ceramic assemblages on overseas Chinese sites focuses on the role that

Chinese merchants and merchant households played in selecting and constraining the

styles and origins of ceramics that were consumed at various kinds of overseas

Chinese sites. This work is exemplified in the writings of Praetzellis and Praetzellis

(2001). In their seminal article “Mangling Symbols of Gentility,” one of the few

articles about overseas Chinese archaeology to be published in a general anthropology

journal, the authors use ceramic analysis as a pathway for analyzing the underlying

social structures that were present in three communities in the Western United States.

They understand that artifacts do not simply reflect economic positions or biological

needs. As they explain, “since artifacts are constantly being recontextualized by their

use in different social situations, their meanings are not fixed” but those meanings are

“as essential a part of [an artifact’s] character as the mundane functions of decoration,

sustenance, and shelter that these items provide” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001:

645). Their specific argument revolves around the strategic manipulation of European

and Chinese ceramics by “merchant class” Chinese immigrants who were attempting

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to create an image of class affiliation with middle- and upper-class white immigrants

while simultaneously disallowing “laboring class” Chinese immigrants the chance to

demonstrate their “Americanness” and their suitability for becoming “proper Victorian

citizens” by only providing their workers with Chinese-produced ceramics.

Praetzellis and Praetzellis argue that much of the purchase, use, and display of

ceramics in 19th century American California was related to the culture of

“Victorianism,” a “suite of genteel values, behaviors, and material gods that were

normative for many people but from which others borrowed as they saw fit”

(Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001: 646). In their article, they explain how three

individuals with different racial positions and class aspirations negotiated this system

through their public and private dining practices. One of these individuals, Yee Ah

Tye, was a Chinese merchant who lived in Sacramento, CA. This individual was a

leader of the Sze Yup District Association. Also known as the Siyi Huiguan, the Sze

Yup Association was one of the largest Chinese American organizations (sometimes

called Tongs) in California. Praetzellis and Praetzellis excavated the site of an

associate of Yee Ah Tye, Tong Ahchick, and recovered:

An interesting mixture of traditional Chinese and English-made pots. The

former, all of which are bowls, include the decorative types known as
“Bamboo,” “Celadon,” Double Happiness,” and “Four Flowers...” The
remainder consists of a variety of Staffordshire bowls, a basin, soup plates, and
dinner plates; some of the latter are incised with Chinese ownership marks
(Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001: 648).

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Instead of interpreting the mixture of European and non-European ceramics as

evidence for acculturation or a mechanical reaction to a particular form of political

economy, Praetzellis and Praetzellis suggest that they may have been tools of

“impression management.”

Praetzellis and Praetzellis cite historical documents that explain how “in the

1850s and 1860s, Chinese merchants regularly held open houses and banquets for

influential members of Sacramento’s establishment” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001:

649) During these banquets, the Chinese merchants would serve their non-Chinese

guests using ceramics the denoted “cultural refinement” and adherence to the

“genteel” character that was suggested through the use and display of said ceramics.

This “impression management” seems to have been at least partially successful as

evidenced by the reports of one newspaper author who commented that the entire

setting looked “very much like ordinary tables” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001: 649).

Through this display, the Chinese merchant emphasized “class divisions within he

Chinese population and the high cultural sophistication of the wealthy.”

Through their analysis, the authors emphasize the “Americanness” of Yee Ah

Tye: He “came to consider himself an American and took on selected genteel values

of the era. His daughters were well educated, and, contrary to Chinese custom, Yee

insisted on being buried in his new homeland” (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001: 649).

But this “Americanness” that was found in both text and archaeology is contrasted

with the artifacts that were recovered from a Chinese miner’s boarding house, located

in the city of La Port, CA. Although these miners were supplied by Yee, they included

only one non-Chinese ceramic tableware in an assemblage that consisted of “81 thin-

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walled, brown-glazed stoneware vessels that once contained traditional Chinese food

and drink” and “a total of 39 porcelain bowls, spoons, and cups” (Praetzellis and

Praetzellis 2001: 649). The authors explain how:

Yee Ah Tye was expert in manipulating genteel material culture for the
purpose of impression management and, we might suggest, for the expression
of his identity as a Chinese American. Yet he supplied his workers with
exclusively Chinese food, medicine, and entertainment, effectively preventing
them from following the path to self-advancement in the new world
(Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001: 649).

Instead of focusing on what artifacts represent, this method focuses on what artifacts

do or, more accurately, what they did in the past. Artifacts are active and agentive.

Praetzellis and Praetzellis provide a concrete example of the role that material culture

had in the constitution of identity and the articulation of power by taking into account

both consumer choice (or, in many cases, the lack of consumer choice) and the role of

ideology in structuring the use of material culture.

One of the difficulties with applying this particular analytic framework to most

other urban and rural overseas Chinese sites is its reliance on tying archaeological

assemblages to specific households and to individuals with a historically identifiable

class position and the presumed ability (or in the case of non-merchant households,

their inability) to make purchasing decisions from among a variety of options that

include both Chinese and non-Chinese ceramics. Without the household analytic, the

agent making decisions about the purchase, use, and display of specific ceramics

becomes obscured. Without an individual- or household-based consumer choice model

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that allows purchasers to choose from a number of different options, it becomes

difficult to understand the ability to purchase and display ceramics that could be used

for the kind of ‘impression management’ being suggested. In other words, in order to

articulate with this theory, our archaeological contexts must mirror the atomized,

individual, consuming, domestic contexts that themselves were a primary ideology-

loaded aspirational goal of Victorian gentility. Voss (2008c) makes a similar point

when she explains how various domestic and community organizations within the

overseas Chinese community provided alternative kinship arrangements that are

rendered invisible when the analytic focus is placed on Euroamerican-styled

“households.” Voss (2008c) also discusses how the depositional patterns found at

overseas Chinese sites make models of cultural production and expression that locate

the household as the central agentive unit difficult to sustain. While some deposits

from overseas Chinese archaeological sites can be tied to specific, historically known

individuals many, if not most, overseas Chinese sites have data that can only be

resolved to the level of “community.” Furthermore, trash deposition in overseas

Chinese sites was often in communal trash pits tied to groups of dwellings or activity

areas instead of privy pits that were tied to individual households. At the Market Street

Chinatown of San Jose, for example, excavated features associated with the Chinese

village largely consisted of wood-lined trash pits and trash lenses of various shapes

and sizes. While some of these pits have been tentatively associated with activities,

such as communal pig roasting, many of them appear to be community trash dumps

where objects from a myriad of different households and passers-by were deposited.

Furthermore, Praetzellis and Praetzellis’s approach fails to account for the issues of

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supply, particularly the possibility that the importation of ceramics was dependent on a

series of contingent events that were taking place in China and that may have

dramatically constrained the possibilities of “choice” or “strategic deployment” even

among the individuals who were importing the goods.

Some aspects of the broad demographic and occupational profile of the Point

Alones Village may have been similar to the profile of other overseas Chinese

communities in the Western United States during the late 19th century. Census records

from 1900 reveal that there were large numbers of single men who lived in the village,

classified as “lodgers.” They also reveal a smaller, but still significant, group of

families with women and children. In other respects, Point Alones Village had a

demographic profile that seems to have varied from that of many other overseas

Chinese communities; it was not an urban Chinatown, being located about a mile from

the urban core of Monterey and about a mile from the small resort town of Pacific

Grove.

It is difficult to determine the extent to which a small group of merchants may

have controlled the flow of goods into the village. While there were undoubtedly

merchants present in the Point Alones Village, it is possible that much of the merchant

activity that articulated with non-Chinese individuals was being conducted by the

Chinese and Chinese American individuals who lived in the small Chinese settlement

within downtown Monterey. We do know from the historical record and from oral

history that even though the Point Alones Village was primarily a fishing village, it

did contained Chinese and Chinese American individuals who worked in a variety of

occupations. From the census we can identify occupations such as clerk, book-keeper,

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fish peddler and day laborer. From other historical records we know that Chinese

individuals worked as gardeners in the Del Monte hotel and we know that Chinese

individuals sold objects and trinkets to tourists traveling from Monterey to Pebble

Beach. Furthermore, it is quite likely that individuals would regularly switch between

different occupations depending on seasonal and economic needs for labor. Historical

records, for example, indicate the existence of large numbers of seasonal woodcutters

and Chinese railway workers were employed in the construction of local lines. We

also know that at least some of the Chinese residents in the Monterey area engaged in

the kind of “impression management” that Praetzellis and Praetzellis highlight, though

not necessarily through the recovered ceramics. This “impression management” was

carried out by individuals and through organized community action. Perhaps the most

stark example of this is the “voter guide” that Lydon (2008: 173) describes. Designed

as a “curiosity piece,” this newspaper article highlights the voting preferences of

several Chinese American citizens. In this article most of the Chinese voters are

dressed in traditional Chinese garb, but one individual, Robert Park, a Chinese

American who was educated at the Methodist school in Pacific Grove, is clad in

Western garb - a suit and a hat - while explaining his intended vote in the upcoming

presidential elections. By mustering the aesthetic markers of American citizenship,

wearing Western dress while participating in a “Western” political system, Robert

Park was demonstrating that Chinese individuals could take on the trappings of

“normative American life,” and, by extension, could also participate in the political

process and act as suitably “domesticated” national subjects. Another common

example of “impression management” found in the historical record at both Point

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Alones and at other overseas Chinese sites is the visible display of American flags and

nationalistic symbolism during festivals and other public events that would be seen by

a large number of non-Chinese individuals. For example, when the Chinese residents

of Monterey organized a parade for their annual “ring game,” an event with thousands

of White spectators, they made sure to prominently display at the front of their parade

one of the most potent symbols of American belonging - the flag. A local newspaper

reporter, observing the day, wrote: “This procession was one of the most unique and

brilliant spectacles ever seen here. Headed by the American flag and the great dragon

flag of the Celestials, with fantastic banners, and dressed in fine silks of every color of

the rainbow, the precession of about 150 Mongolians marched through the streets to

the indescribable music of two Chinese bands” (Lydon 2008: 327).

It is important to remember that the strategic display of material culture was

not just a question of cynically deploying material culture for Chinese Americans to

“pretend” to be more “authentically American” than the non-Chinese majority

imagined them to be. Archaeologists have discussed how, during this time period, the

acquisition and display of the “proper” kinds of ceramics was both reflective of and

constitutive of “middle class” American identity (e.g. Wall 1994, Praetzellis and

Praetzellis 2001). The Chinese participation in this performative identity was no more

or less “authentic” than that of other groups (see, for example, Mullins 1999).

Performativity, as Butler (1993) reminds us, is no less real, substantive, or meaningful

because of its performative characteristic.

Furthermore, the emotional and psychological effects of visibly using material

culture to establish claim to a national and class-based identity, this “impression

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management,” remains salient in the present. For example, a descendant of village

residents has shown to me historical photographs that show Point Alones Village

residents dressed in “Western” clothing. The narrative description that accompanies

these photographs is one of a family that was “both American and Chinese.” Through

their ability to recognize and conform to the material cues of early 20th century

American middle class life, I was told, village residents demonstrated their “hard

working” character, their ability to conform to “mainstream” culture, and their desire

to become “American.” This story stands in sharp contrast to the very public

photographs and drawings of the “exotic” aspects of the Chinese village that were

printed in Newspapers in the 19th and 20th century in order to emphasize difference.

With a few key exceptions, it was images of the “exotic otherness” of the village and

not images of mundane similarities that filled the pages of historical dime novels,

newspaper accounts, and postcards of the Point Alones Village.

If a newspaper reporter or a visiting photographer could, implicitly or

explicitly, choose to highlight either the aspects of the Point Alones Village that

displayed material similarities between the Chinese and their non-Chinese neighbors

or the aspects of the Point Alones Village that displayed material difference, an

archaeologist could easily do the same.

I cannot definitively tie the various features of recovered artifacts to a specific

household, a group of households, or a particular activity or occupation. The features I

excavated all appear to be communal trash middens or collections of debris that were

deposited during a demolition period. The kind of depositional resolution that

Praetzellis and Praetzellis used to differentiate between the “merchant” and the

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“worker” quarters in their study is simply not visible at the Point Alones Chinese

Village and, judging from the historical record, appears to have not been particularly

visible to non-Chinese observers of the village. Instead of tackling this question at the

level of the individual, we must tackle this question at the level of the community.

When examining the data from archaeological excavations at CA-MNT-104, it

becomes apparent that each of the primary productive units contain examples of both

Asian-produced and European and/or American produced ceramics. Although

European or American produced whiteware, ironstone, and /or “hotel china” was

found in each of the four primary productive units associated with the overseas

Chinese occupation of the site, its percentage of the tableware assemblage (MNI)

varied as follows:

4% in N1012 E997

16% in N1042 E980

16% in N1054 E981

15% in N1054 E982

When classified by weight, differences are even more pronounced:

8% in N1012 E997

20% in N1042 E980

21% in N1054 E981

28% in N1054 E982

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 There are a number of different plausible explanations for the presence of

European and American produced ceramics in the Chinese-associated features on site

and their differential distribution across the site.

If one were to simply examine the percentage of European ceramics in the

assemblage recovered from Chinese contexts of CA-MNT-104, one might think that

the non-Asian ceramics represent the residents of the Point Alones Village engaging in

the kind of “impression management” that Yee Ah Tye appears to have engaged in. As

I discussed in Chapter 4, non-Chinese individuals regularly visited the site, a fact that

would ostensibly bolster this argument. But upon closer examination, the form of the

recovered non-Asian ceramics suggests that if the Chinese individuals were using

these ceramics when in the presence of non-Chinese individuals, it was likely not to

project a “genteel Victorian middle-class” image. The majority of the recovered non-

Asian ceramics consist of plain white-bodied stoneware vessels. “Hotel china” is

particularly common in the assemblage. These undecorated vessels are not the kind of

“fine china” that would have been used to conspicuously display “Victorian gentility.”

Although “impression management” was taking place in certain aspects of Point

Alones life, its presence cannot be identified in the ceramic assemblage. These vessels

could have arrived at the Point Alones Village through a number of different

pathways. We know from the historical record that local hotels such as the Del Monte

employed many Chinese individuals; this employment may have provided these

individuals with the means to acquire these ceramics. It is also possible that these

ceramics were purchased from local non-Chinese merchants by merchants or other

residents of the village in the course of their regular economic exchanges. A third

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possibility is that these vessels were included in shipments to the village by Chinese

merchants who acquired the vessels from outside of Monterey. The presence of large

numbers of plain or undecorated non-Asian ceramics at archaeological sites associated

with Chinese and overseas Chinese occupation in the United States has been noted at

other sites (Orser 2007), although the distribution has usually been interpreted through

a functionalist lens that involves catering to the tastes of non-Chinese visitors to these

sites (Kautz and Risse 2006). The situation at the Point Alones Village, where plain

non-Asian ceramics were casually deposited alongside Asian tablewares and storage

vessels, suggests that a model assuming that Chinese use of non-Asian ceramics is for

the sake of non-Chinese individuals (either as participants in a meal or as visitors) is

difficult to sustain.

APPROACH 3: CULTURAL CONSERVATISM

A critical question that archaeologists working with overseas Chinese

assemblages that were deposited during the 19th century throughout the world wrestle

with is the fact that the bulk of Chinese produced objects in those assemblages tend to

be composed of a fairly limited range of design styles, vessel forms, and decorative

motifs. Four flowers, bamboo, celadon, and double happiness vessels are found

throughout the world, displaying a homogeneity of design and technology that is

strikingly different from the variegated and constantly changing designs that were

emerging from the Staffordshire pottery industry and its imitators during the late 19th

and early 20th centuries. The imagined consistency and homogeneity of form and style

in Chinese produced tablewares is even more pronounced when it comes to Chinese

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produced stonewares - vessel forms such as soy pots, spouted jars, large storage jars,

and wide mouth jars, all forms that archaeologists have suggested have little stylistic

or functional variation across hundreds of years. Even many non-ceramic objects,

coins for example, do not show the kind of dramatic variation of form and decorative

motif that was present on American (and many European) coins at the time.

One theoretical approach that archaeologists have used to explain the

persistence of design motifs in Chinese ceramics found on overseas Chinese sites and

the seeming difference between the multiplicity of patterns and designs in European

and American produced ceramics is an appeal to the “cultural conservatism” of

Chinese and Chinese American individuals. Under this analytic framework, Chinese

individuals are imagined to be particularly resistant to change because of deep

sociocultural structures within Chinese society. Archaeologists who make this

argument draw upon “commonsensical” or popular notions of “Chinese character” and

“Chinese identity” and the work of anthropologists and sociologists who have

constructed this orientalist reading of Chinese society. An example of this orientalist

scholarship, which is deeply interpolated in powerful discourses of sex and gender,

can be read in Hoy’s account of California Chinese festivals:

It is not difficult to explain why these traditional feasts and holidays have been
so faithfully kept up in a foreign land through a century of time. There is the
conservatism of the Chinese, for one thing, a distinct social characteristic of
the common people of China, developed through four thousand years of
unbroken history. Being conservative, they revere the ancient traditions and
customs and scrupulously observe them wherever they go. Being also a people
with a lusty and unashamedly hedonistic enjoyment of life, they delight in all
manner of celebrations and holidays, social, religious, or otherwise. Secondly,

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 the early California Chinese, product of an isolated culture, were inordinately
proud of their own brand of culture and everything that went with it-social
institutions, religious forms, crafts, scholarship, philosophies, and festivals. In
the early years between 1849 and 1900, the California Chinese, as a whole,
found little use for foreign (American) ceremonies and what they sincerely
though mistakenly considered the barbarian customs of the fan kweis (foreign
devils) or fa kay kweis (flowery flag devils-a term, now outmoded, denoting
the Americans, since the old Cantonese name for America was the Land of the
Flowery Flag (Hoy 1948: 62).

In overseas Chinese archaeology this discourse is perhaps best exemplified in

the work of Felton et al. when they write that “Nineteenth-century Chinese culture and

society have been frequently characterized as conservative (i.e., resistant to change) in

terms of the maintenance of traditional ways of living and making a living” (Felton et

al. 1984: 43). They ascribe this conservatism to political, economic, and ideological

factors. In their words:

Factors which fostered conservatism include the traditional agrarian economy,

powerful centralized bureaucracy, and the influence of Confucian ideology,
which codified and reinforced traditional social relationships. The newly
industrialized capitalist nations of the nineteenth century, on the other hand,
were irrevocably committed to change and growth in may forms. Indeed,
continually increasing consumption is one of the basic tenets of capitalism
(Felton et al. 1984: 43).

According to Felton et al., the political economy of the Chinese was a system

inexorably interwoven with the lack of modernity and industrial capitalism on the part

of the Chinese. This perspective has long been employed by Western archaeologists

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and collectors. For example, in 1932 an early article about Chinese ceramics warned

collectors that:

All white-rimmed temmoku bowls must not be assumed to be antiques. Such

things are still made in Northern China and sold for a few cash by street
hawkers in Peking. One can see ricksha boys eating their mid-day rice out of
bowls of this kind, which shows how conservative the Chinese are with their
pottery and how careful one must be, especially with these simple wares. The
same caution should apply to the acquisition of the plain black-glazed "Honan"
wares, which are also in common use to-day (Hobson 1934: 214).

Descriptions of archaeological assemblages that posit “cultural conservatism”

as a primary motivating factor for the use of Asian produced ceramics among the

Point Alones Village are difficult to sustain for reasons related to changes occurring in

China, for reasons related to anti-Chinese racism in California, and for reasons related

to local developments in Monterey.

For one, the idea that goods imported from China represent “traditional” goods

that allow the Chinese express their “cultural conservatism” disavows or ignores the

dramatic social, cultural, and economic changes that were occurring in the regions of

Southern China from which many Point Alones residents immigrated (Mei 1979).

Guangdong had long been home to large manufacturing centers. For example, Mei

explains how “textile manufacture was so advanced that in the vicinity of Canton

alone, during the mid-Ming period, there were over 2500 weavers each employing 20

more workers, and agents for Cantonese textile merchants went north to Shanghai to

procure raw materials for their looms” (Mei 1979: 468). In the 19th century Chinese

merchants and officials regularly set up Chinese factories in Guangdong. For example,

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Ma outlines the story of a Guangdong factory owner who sparked the development of

a complex industrial silk weaving district, explaining how “by 1881, there were

already about 11 [silk] factories in Nanhai and 6 factories in Shunde” (Ma 2005: 17).

In addition to the dramatic economic changes that were occurring in Southern China,

the region was also a hotbed of political changes (Chesneaux et al. 1976; Roberts

2006). Numerous rebellions, Republican movements, and secret societies existed.

These groups often supported by the overseas Chinese and it is clear that Chinese

residents of Guangdong were actively debating alternative political futures. Finally, a

description of the Chinese ceramics as “traditional” discounts the artistic changes that

were reflected in Chinese ceramics. Even a cursory glance at Chinese art history

reveals that the artistic styles were changing during the Qing (Clunas 1997; Berger

2003; Rowe 2009), that ceramic decorative designs were “deeply marked with

characteristics found in contemporaneous painting” (dArgence 1983: 143), and that

Chinese painting during the 19th century was “neither so repetitive nor so devoid of

innovation as many modern critics charge” (Croizier 1988: 3). The history of

modernity in China is complex and remains a heavily debated topic in Chinese history

and historiography (Hsu 1970; Spence 1990).

A second reason why explanations of cultural conservatism are difficult to

sustain when attempting to understand the ceramic patterning at the Point Alones

Village is because of the influential role that anti-Chinese racism played in structuring

the goods and products available to the Chinese. From the historical record, we know

that the residents of the Point Alones Village lived in a context where their

racialization resulted in widespread discrimination that occasionally spilled over into

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violent oppression. Mullins has suggested that instead of reflecting a “preference” for

“traditional” goods, “it could also be argued that the Overseas Chinese consumers’

distinction - or the archaeological desire for that distinction - is the structurally

determined product of racism and class ideology” (Mullins 2008: 154). This racism

would influence the archaeological assemblage in a number of different ways. For

example, Chinese individuals who had experienced discrimination from local

shopkeepers would be more likely to trust and purchase goods from Chinese

merchants who, in turn, acquired their goods from Chinese wholesalers and importers.

A third objection to this theory is that many residents of the Point Alones

Village were second or even third generation Americans who clearly intended to stay

in the United States. This is corroborated by historical and archaeological evidence,

including the presence of a seemingly permanent graveyard on-site. Individuals like

Tuck Lee and Tim Wong clearly established identities as Chinese Americans and they

vigorously argued for their rights (see Chapter 3 for a more thorough explanation of

this history). This was clearly not a community that consisted solely of “sojourners.”

APPROACH 4: HERMENEUTIC APPROACH.

The fourth approach that archaeologists studying overseas Chinese

communities have taken is one that, in the words of Lydon attempts to account for “an

understanding of the complexities of cultural exchange and experiments with

representation that go beyond the flat narrative of the distant past” (Lydon 1999: 1). In

her work, Lydon attempts to build a more textured and nuanced understanding of the

ways that artifacts were emeshed in the discursive production of categories of social

411
and political identity. Lydon expresses frustration with what she characterizes as the

“functionalist” explanations of previous archaeological accounts of the Chinese -

accounts that begin by “assuming that culture change comprises a mechanical, linear,

and quantifiable replacement of traditional traits by new ones. [The functionalist

perspective] assumes that the material evidence matches with human behavior in a

simple fashion” (Lydon 1999: 181). Tracing the history of overseas Chinese studies,

Lydon explains that while the approach presented by Praetzellis and Praetzellis - an

approach the focuses on the strategic use of ceramics to project certain definitions of

community, was “a major advance on earlier work in that it examines the social

context and symbolic meaning of the archaeological evidence,” it still perpetuates “an

explicit distinction between material symbols of ethnic identity and ‘ethnically-

specific-behaviors’, the latter being more likely to be evidenced in the archaeological

record” (Lydon 1999: 185).

Lydon proposes an archaeological project that allows us to “understand the

particular context of material culture in creating identity, recognize its dynamic and

manipulable character, and to explore its strategic symbolic meanings” (Lydon 1999:

191). She accomplishes this by juxtaposing historical, archaeological, and

ethnographic evidence in order to illuminate how spaces and objects within the

“Rocks” community of Sidney were differentially used and understood of by various

Chinese and non-Chinese inhabitants and visitors. For example, Lydon discusses the

gambling houses in The Rocks that catered to Chinese and non-Chinese customers in

terms of the interaction and cultural exchange between Chinese and their non-Chinese

neighbors - or as she puts it “pidgin forms crafted from the cultural material to hand”

412
(Lydon 1999: 103). Lydon notes how within the Chinese community there was quite a

bit of dispute about the presence of gambling, with several “respectable merchants”

being “averse to gambling on moral grounds, and saw the threat it posed to their own

interests” (Lydon 1999: 106). There was also economic participation in these activities

by non-Chinese, such as the “‘low Europeans’ and ‘noted thieves’” who “were often

employed as touts or ‘bummers’, exhorting passers-by to ‘play fan-tan, very good

game’” (Lydon 1999: 109) and the gamblers themselves who, as one European man

said, enjoyed visiting a gambling hall where the “excitement is intense. There is more

excitement, I believe, when there is a lot of money on the board, and the croupier is

picking out the counters, than there is over the Melbourne Cup” (Lydon 1999: 110).

After describing a series of intracultural and intercultural interactions, Lydon

summarizes the situation of the gambling houses in the Rocks:

The opposition often created between white and Chinese communities can be
seen to fracture and dissolve, then, as evidence emerges for both divisions
within the Chinese community and alliances across the racial line. Identity was
more complex than the crude axis of ‘race’ allows, constituted by other
interests and allegiances, such as profit, ‘standing’ and ‘respectability’,
‘morality’, and gender (Lydon 1999: 129).

Throughout the various chapters of this dissertation I have attempted to

demonstrate how material culture from the Point Alones Village (and from other

Chinese and Chinese American communities during the late 19th and early 20th

Centuries) was both constituted by, and constitutive of, various social, economic, and

political regimes that were unfolding during this epoch in California history. In this

subsection I will attempt to examine how similar processes to those written about by

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Lydon can be understood with reference to ceramic artifacts found at the Point Alones

Chinese Village. What is important when tracing these pathways is to realize that all

of the objects recovered from archaeological sites have the potential to tell interesting

stories. This is even true for small objects, single objects, and objects that don’t appear

to “fit” into a neat context. The ceramic object I am going to examine may only

represent a single catalog sheet in the database, but by unfolding the discursive

productions that were woven through and around this object in the past, and by hinting

at the discursive productions that continue to be woven through and around these

objects in the present, we can understand how people in the past deployed objects and

aesthetics in consort with powerful discourses.

The previously discussed analytic frameworks attend to political economy,

class identity, race, and political belonging. While each of these social and economic

processes is imbricated with a gendered dimension, this component is rarely

commented upon. Indeed, the Chinese presence in California and the relationship

between China and “The West” cannot be comprehensively understood without taking

into account its gendered dimensions (Rofel 1999).

GENDER AND CERAMICS AT THE POINT ALONES VILLAGE

Chinese villages during this time period are usually imagined to be almost

exclusively bachelor male communities with the few women present being either

prostitutes or the idle upper class wives of rich merchants (Greenwood 1993; Fosha

2004). Although there is a grain of truth to this depiction (most of the Chinese in the

United States were men) the reality of life in these communities was never as neat as

414
has been imagined. For example, a surprisingly large percentage of Chinese men in the

United States had wives and families who remained in China while they traveled

across the ocean. Although prostitutes were present among the population of Chinese

women, there presence was not as common as anti-Chinese crusaders imagined and

historians and archaeologists have pointed out that there were numerous Chinese

women in the United States who were neither prostitutes nor the foot-bound wives of

the idle rich.

At the Point Alones Village women and children were present from the

beginning. In fact a California-born Chinese American named Mary Chin Lee was

born and raised on the Monterey Peninsula before the Point Alones Village was even

founded. In her later life she made her home at the Point Alones Village. Additionally,

historical maps show that one of the houses at Point Alones was likely owned by a

woman and historical photographs show Chinese women working at the Point Alones

Village. While the Point Alones Village had a higher concentration of women than

most contemporaneous overseas Chinese communities, census records do indeed

reveal that the majority of the residents were men.

This gendered homogenization that imagined the overseas Chinese to be

exclusively male communities, with a few female prostitutes and wealthy wives of

merchants excepted, was employed by many non-Chinese groups and individuals to

deny Chinese and Chinese Americans – including American citizens – equal rights

with immigrants from Europe and white U.S. citizens. This is shown most forcefully

in the series of laws targeting the Chinese that played off these fears in either the text

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of the laws or the legislative debate surrounding them, including law such as the 1875

Page Act and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

The eventual goal of these laws, though only partially successful, was to

expunge the Chinese influence from Western United States entirely. As Kaplin (1998)

suggests, Chinese women were seen as a clear and present danger to the process of

domesticating the “wild west,” standing in the way of allowing it to become the

exclusive domain of white families who were imagined to be the only individuals able

to actively participate in the governance of a liberal democracy.

Even though these gendered discourses said more about non-Chinese anxieties

than they did about any intrinsic identity or characteristic of the Chinese themselves,

they had real effects. The suite of rights denied to Chinese and Chinese Americans

included the right to immigrate with their families. In particular, the Page Act, passed

under the guise of stopping prostitution, prevented many Chinese women from

entering the U.S. The effects of these gendered exclusionary laws were readily

apparent. Working in consort with anti-miscegenation laws (that, in California, were

in effect until 1948 when the State Supreme Court ruled that such laws were

unconstitutional in Perez v. Sharp), this legal structure made it nearly impossible for

Chinese men to have and raise children in the United States. Chinese immigrants were

to be excluded from the United States because they were imagined to be unfit to settle

down in a “proper and respectable” manner, but the exclusionary laws simultaneously

made difficult if not impossible for the Chinese and Chinese Americans to actually

meet this (admittedly racist and heteronormative) ideal of citizenship.

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 Given the fact that women and children were clearly present at the Point

Alones Village, how did non-Chinese individuals living near the Point Alones Village

maintain a gendered and raced understanding of the Point Alones residents that did not

undermine the stereotypical imaginary so important to maintaining and perpetuating

the racist laws and actions?

When I read through newspaper accounts from the time period of the Chinese

village and when I look at contemporaneous popular press depictions of the Chinese in

general, and the Point Alones Village in particular, I often encounter depictions of the

Chinese that fit these broader tropes into the local context. In this kind of depiction,

the idea that the Point Alones Villagers were dangerous and threatening, even

infectious to the good domestication of the nation is retained, but the sexualized

connotations of prostitution are replaced with a desexualized imaginary that revolves

around laboring bodies and that continues to exclude Chinese women from normative

femininity. In the historical record, Point Alones Village women and children were

considered “infectious” not because they were prostitutes, but because they were dirty

from their labor. Chiang describes one particularly illustrative example when she

relays the words of a 19th century visitor writer who summarized the Point Alones

Village residents as “swarthy women and little children who are tanned as black as

negroes by sun and wind, swarm in squalid cabins, and tumble about in the dust of the

single street” (Chiang 2008: 18).

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TINY CUPS AND CHINOISERIE

At the same time that the women living at the Point Alones Village were being

described in ways that highlight an “improper” gender, the men living in the village

were articulated with an orientalist framework that associated “China” with “the

feminine” and with an inability to become a “proper” citizen.

In other publications I have explained how this orientalist framework was

established and propagated in part through the sale and circulation of chinoiserie,

which is the:

Term used to describe material culture and texts in the Chinese style that were
designed largely for a European and non-Chinese North American audience.
Items in this style such as bric-a-brac, ceramics, and cloth were introduced to
Europe and the Americas beginning in the seventeenth century and were often
sold as high-class or luxury goods (Williams 2010: 157).

During my archaeological excavations at the Point Alones Village I recovered

9 (MNI) tiny cups [see Figures 7.5 and 7.6 for examples of tiny cups] primarily

decorated in four flowers or celadon motifs. These ceramic vessels were found in the

same context as ceramics made in Europe and other “Asian” ceramics. Greenwood has

noted that these “are called wine cups or, more properly, bowls because they do not

have handles. They could have been used to hold any of the Chinese spirits, brandy,

Ng-Ga-Py, or other beverage” (Greenwood 1993: 75). Tiny cups such as this one are

commonly found by archaeologists excavating overseas Chinese site and they were

regularly used by Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans.

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 I have argued that these “tiny cups,” when used by Chinese men, were viewed

by non-Chinese observers in ways that perpetuated the associations between China,

Chinese ceramics, and “the feminine.” Viewers, I argued, associated the real Chinese

individuals who they were observing “with the emasculated Chinese men ‘entranced

by a dainty cup and saucer’ (Porter 1996: 226) found in popular culture and literature”

(Williams 2008: 60). Although chinoiserie and “Chinese style” ceramics were viewed

as essential material components to express Victorian gentility (Porter 1996), a series

of public descriptions of the “improperly gendered” character of the men and women

living in the Point Alones Village, such as the description of laboring bodies provided

above or the descriptions of “dirt” and “pollution” described in Chapter 4, “perpetuate

the idea that the Chinese could only exist as properly raced beings ‘somewhere else’

and that ‘the everyday bodies of men, women, and children at the Point Alones

Village, tainted by a separation from their proper place, could never measure up to the

idealized bodies’” (Williams 2010: 161).

Alongside this feminizing discourse, I argued that the Chinese individuals who

used these tiny cups would have constructed alternative readings of these polysemic

objects. I suggested that the social context of drinking and the aesthetic qualities of the

cups may have formed affective connections with Chinese masculinities for the

individuals who drink from the cups. As I explained “it is possible that these same

ceramics were read through a different matrix of hegemonic masculinities that

articulated more strongly with Chinese history and literature and that connected to

issues of class identity and political consciousness” (Williams 2008: 60). Hegemonic

Chinese masculinities expressed in Chinese literature and religion that are associated

419
with foreign travel, alcohol consumption, and political consciousness may have been

the discourses read through the tiny cups by the individuals who used them (Williams

2008: 60-62).

CONCLUSION

The ceramic assemblage recovered during excavations at the Point Alones Village

demonstrates that the Chinese immigrant and Chinese American individuals who lived

there existed in a material world that was a complex assemblage of objects and

aesthetics that came from China, Europe, and the United States. The ceramics that the

villagers acquired, used, and then were lost or discarded circulated in multiple social

economies. For example, the presence of the “Asian” ceramics in the village could be

used to demonstrate the continued use of “traditional” objects (as they were by 19th

century non-Chinese observers and many contemporary archaeologists) or they could

just as easily be used to demonstrate international connections between Monterey and

a China that was undergoing rapid social, political, and economic changes. These

ceramics also point towards the deep and complex connections between race and

gender that were made material through the articulation of artifacts

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 Coda

“What’s your name?” Samuel asked pleasantly.

“Lee. Got more name. Lee papa family name. Call Lee.”
“I’ve read quite a lot about China. You born in China?”
“No. Born here.”
Samuel was silent for quite a long time while the buggy lurched down the wheel track
toward the dusty valley. “
“Lee,” he said at last, “I mean no disrespect, but I’ve never been able to figure why
you people still talk pidgin when an illiterate baboon from the black bogs of Ireland,
with a head full of Gaelic and a tongue like a potato, learns to talk a poor grade of
English in ten years.”
Lee grinned. “Me talkee Chinese talk,” he said.
“Well, I guess you have your reasons. And it’s not my affair. I hope you’ll forgive me
if I don’t believe it, Lee.”
Lee looked at him and the brown eyes under their rounded upper lids seemed to open
and deepen until they weren’t foreign any more, but man’s eyes, warm with
understanding. Lee chuckled. “It’s more than a convenience,” he said. “It’s even
more than self protection. Mostly we have to use it to be understood at all.”
- John Steinbeck. East of Eden

The conversation between Lee and Samuel explores one of the tensions at the

heart of this dissertation. Archaeologists who have studied Chinese immigrant and

Chinese American communities have long “made sense” of their discoveries by

focusing on what Mullins (2008) has called the “strange and unusual.” The

archaeological story of Chinese Americans is told through those Chinese-looking

objects and Chinese-looking aesthetics that usually stand for an empty and unchanging

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“traditional” China. Research that commonly circulates around questions of

“assimilation” has the potential to conflate the materializations of a gendered racism

with the “Chinese-ness” of individuals and communities in the past. It also has the

potential to ascribe single stable meanings to what this dissertation has demonstrated

are objects with polysemic meanings and functions.

In this dissertation I presented an alternative approach, one that explored how

powerful and politically charged Chinese immigrant and Chinese American identities

were formed through the circulation of both physical objects (recovered

archaeologically) and objects materialized through text (recovered from the archives).

I have walked through a series of examples and case studies in an effort to unravel the

interplay between concrete local interactions and globally salient discourses. I

demonstrated how those global discourses exist because real people, bodies, objects,

and aesthetics are bundled together and situationally articulated at specific sites, such

as the Point Alones Village. Ultimately, I argue that the situation “on the ground” at

the Point Alones Village was far more complex and diverse than can be captured

though a single narrative framework. Steinbeck captures this multiplicity when he

writes:

Cannery Row in Monterey, in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a

quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the
gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped
pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron,
honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and
laboratories and fophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores,
pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the
same man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and

422
 angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing
(Steinbeck 1945: 1).

Indeed, the stories about the Point Alones Village that I have told with the

objects and artifacts highlighted in this document only represent a small number of the

stories that could be told from this assemblage. For example, among the coins that

were archaeologically recovered, the coin minted during the reign of the Kangxi

Emperor could be used as a pathway to discuss spiritual practices in the village and the

ease with which archaeologists ascribe “magic” and “religion” to exotic-looking

objects. Alternatively, the many “Liberty Dimes” found on site could be used to

question the economic and social isolation of village residents or to challenge folk

typologies that posit radical distinctions between coins that do and do not serve as the

“money commodity.”

While writing East of Eden John Steinbeck wrote daily letters to his editor. On

July 24, 1951 he wrote: “I sat with Elain and told her the whole history of the Chinese

in California as far as I knew it. And all of this as a background for a few paragraphs I

am going to do today. Lord - if you put down all that went in back of a long book, it

would be endless. And I must be careful not to overload this book - to keep the story

straight and true when my impulse is to tell everything to this book” (Steinbeck 1969:

135). With this letter in mind, I will close by reminding myself and my readers that

this dissertation is but a partial reflection of the complex series of objects and artifacts

that were found in the soil at Point Alones. Those objects were themselves only a

partial reflection of the vibrant and complex social worlds of the people who lived at

423
Point Alones. Many more stories could be told about this village. Many more stories

will be told. But those are stories for a different time.

424
TABLES

425
 Table 7.1
Table showing Tableware Assemblage from
Chinese Contexts of CA-MNT-104
Units N1012 E997 and N1042 E980

426
 Table 7.2
Table showing Tableware Assemblage from
Chinese Contexts of CA-MNT-104
Units N1054 E981 and N1054 E982

427
FIGURES

428
 Figure 3.1
Map of California showing
Location of Monterey Peninsula

429
 Figure 3.2
Map of Monterey Peninsula showing
Location of Point Alones

430
 Figure 3.3
Map of Monterey Peninsula
From Truman (1883: 130)

431
 Figure 4.1
Excerpt from In the House of the Tiger (Knox 1911: 92-93)
showing Textual Descriptions of Point Alones
Juxtaposed With a Photograph of Point Alones

432
 Figure 4.2
Etching of Monterey Chinatown
From La Tour du Monde (1876/07-1876/12: 157)

433
 Figure 5.1
USGS 7.5' Series, Monterey Quadrangle, California
showing Project Location
(Cropped by Author)
See Figure 5-2 for Detail of Project Location

434
 Figure 5.2
USGS 7.5' Series, Monterey Quadrangle, California
showing Point Alones and the
Hopkins Marine Station
(Cropped by Author)

435
 Figure 5.3
Map of Hopkins Marine Station
Site of Project Location

436
 Figure 5.4
Map of Excavation Priority Areas

437
 Figure 5.5
Map of Excavation Unit Locations

438
 Figure 5.6
Map of Excavation Unit Locations
in Priority Area 1

439
 Figure 5.7
Location of Primary Project Benchmarks
(Benchmark “2” Was Not Used)

440
 Figure 5.8
Map of Point Alones Village showing
Structures Remaining After 1906 Fire
Made by the Pacific Improvement Company (1906)
See Figure 5.9 for Detail

441
 Figure 5.9
Detail of Figure 5.8 showing
Some Standing Structures
Including House of Tuck Lee
Made by the Pacific Improvement Company (1906)

442
 Figure 5.10
Photograph of Hopkins Marine Station showing
Approximate Location of Tuck Lee’s House and
Location of Monterey Boatworks Building

443
 Figure 5.11
Map of 1977 ARS Excavations
at Hopkins Marine Station
From Winter and Roop (1977)
Map Courtesy William Roop

444
 Figure 5.12
Plan Drawing of Stratum 3
Unit N1074 E1014

445
 Figure 5.13
Unit N1012 E997
North Sidewall Profile

446
 Figure 5.14
Unit N1042 E980
North Sidewall Profile

447
 Figure 5.15
Unit N1054 E981/E982
North Sidewall Profile
Because of the Stratigraphic Complexity
Individual Soil Layers are Not Labeled
Instead, Occupational Periods Have Been Highlighted

448
 Figure 5.16
Plan Drawing of N1054 E981, Stratum 12
Presented as an Example of Artifact Density in the
Chinese Occupation Layer

449
 Figure 5.17
Photograph of Large Boatworks-Period
Boat Fragment
From Unit N1019 E946

450
 Figure 6.1
Example of Wen Coins
Recovered From Excavations at Point Alones Village

451
 Figure 6.2
Unidentifiable Coin
Recovered From N1054 E981, Stratum 13

452
 Figure 6.3
Chinese Wen
Recovered From N1054 E981, Stratum 13

453
 Figure 6.4
“Seated Liberty Dime”
Recovered From N1054 E981, Stratum 13

454
 Figure 6.5
Unidentifiable Coin (Likely “Seated Liberty” Dime)
Recovered From N1054 E981, Stratum 13

455
 Figure 6.6
1873 “Seated Liberty Dime”
Recovered From N1054 E982, Stratum 13
For Detail See Figure 6.7

456
 Figure 6.7
Detail of 1873 “Seated Liberty Dime” [Figure 6.6]
Recovered From N1054 E982, Stratum 13

457
 Figure 6.8
Hong Kong 1 Mil Coin
Recovered From N1054 E981, Stratum 13

458
 Figure 6.9
Chinese Wen
Recovered From N1054 E982, Stratum 12

459
 Figure 6.10
Chinese Wen From Reign of Kangxi Emperor (1661-1722)
Recovered From N1012 E997, Stratum 6
For Detail See Figure 6.11

460
 Figure 6.11
Detail of Chinese Wen
From Reign of Kangxi Emperor (1661-1722)
Recovered From N1012 E997, Stratum 6

461
 Figure 7.1
Example of “Bamboo” Decorated Bowl
From Point Alones Village

462
 Figure 7.2
Example of “Four Flowers” Decorated Dish
From Point Alones Village

463
 Figure 7.3
Example of “Celadon” Decorated Bowl
From Point Alones Village

464
 Figure 7.4
Example of “Double Happiness” Decorated Bowl
From Santa Cruz, CA

465
 Figure 7.5
Example of Tiny Cup with “Four Flowers” Decoration
Compared to Bowl with “Bamboo” Decoration
From Point Alones Village

466
 Figure 7.6
Example of Tiny Cup with “Celadon” Decoration
Compared to Bowl with “Celadon” Decoration
From Point Alones Village

467
REFERENCES

468
ARCHIVAL SOURCES:
Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley
Western Americana Collection
Hare (Alice I.) Photograph Collection
1993 interview with Thomas Chinn

County of Monterey Recorder-County Clerk’s Office

County Clerk Records

History San Jose Research Library

Knox (Jessie Juliet) Collection 1893-1932

Monterey Public Library, California History Room

Draft Environmental Impact Report: New Exhibit Wing Monterey Bay
Aquarium
Historic Clipping File (Clippings File),
Historical Newspapers Collection (Microfilm)
Original Newspaper Collection, 1846-1970
WPA Historical Survey of the Monterey Peninsula, 1936-1937

Stanford University Libraries, Special Collections

David Jacks Papers
Mary Sheldon Barnes Papers
Pacific Improvement Company Records
Payroll Book, 1883 (Pacific Improvement Company)

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Chicago Tribune
Christian Advocate
Daily Alta California
Epitah Prospector
Harper’s Monthly
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Idaho Statesman
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Macon Telegraph
Missouri Republican
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Monterey New Era
Monterey Trader
Monterey Weekly Herald
New York Herald
Overland Monthly

469
Pacific Grove Daily Review
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San Francisco Bulletin
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Examiner
San Jose Evening News
San Jose Mercury News
Sewanee Review
Sioux City Journal
Springfield Republican
Sunset
The Collector
The Grove at High Tide

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